What makes them think things should always be the same price, everywhere?
Sure, we're talking about essentially the same thing, but there's a reason why things cost different amounts in various places. Avacadoes are cheaper during avacado season, and cherries/apples/pears/etc. during their respective seasons. They're cheaper near where they are grown. Sometimes, they're not even available due to lack of demand.
It's simple economics. There's little/no reason why globally universal prices should be in place - it's an asinine idea.
Because you're an idiot.
Avocado's are real goods requiring real transportation from the fields to the markets.
Digital media has no such constraints. The goods served out of the same server in Europe have the same cost regardless of if they are served to France, Spain or Germany. Why does the price differ for these three countries?
Same as serving them from Japan, NA or Europe into any country in the world. It's an extremely asinine idea to think that digital goods have the same inherent transport costs as perishable goods or even physical goods given the fact they don't need to be shipped any-fucking-where. Local taxes might have given you a crutch to stand your lame point on but I'd just point out that Australia's GST is 10% whilst UK's VAT is 20% yet the UK price is cheaper than the Australian price (and US prices don't include sales tax).
Distributors could use this point when there was a real cost in distributing physical media but since the DVDs are all pressed in the same third world location this has no longer been an excuse (shipment to China to Australia costs no more than shipment from China to the US, especially with the Chinese-Australian free trade agreement) but not when the content is digital (having no physical form).
Australia's government will probably reject this. Geographic IP blocking is already necessary to protect Australians from being able to buy video games that Australia has not classified for elements objectionable to parents.
You;re right that Australia's government will reject that theory now we have an R18 rating ratified by parliament.
Yep, the whole process worked, Michael Atkinson was forced to stand down over voter dissent and R18 was passed.
Amazing isn't it.
As for parents, they've been buying violent games for little Johnny (the generic child, not our former Prime Minister) for longer than the discussion has even been in Parliament because they think their child can handle it. Yep, violent video games have been around for just as long and we have a lower murder rate than the US (1.1 per 100,000 vs 4.5 per 100,000, international average was 7.6).
If you wanted to make the least bit of sense you would have siad:
Geographic IP location was already nessasary to TO PAY LOCAL TAXES
Which is completely fair and does not require IP blocking NOR PRICE INCREASES for Australian purchasers.
The content that's on Hulu is also on TPB. The only thing that I'm blocked from is paying for it.
Music distributors, are you listening? I want to buy music from an artist I like, but your distribution agreements with iTunes won't let me (legitimately) PURCHASE the music you supposedly want to sell (it's only available in Canada, I live in the USA).
Here in lies one of the other problems.
I wont buy from Apple due to the way they treat their competitors, so I cant buy from Itunes and often here in Oz there is often no alternative.
Licensing should be indiscriminate. A flat license fee per copy sold (yes sales execs, I'm only counting when real money changes hands) should be payable to an independent licensing authority and this fee should be the same for the world over (no one in this day and age gives a shit if it's in US Dollars, Euro, South African Rand or fucking Malaysian Ringit, electronic money costs nothing to change). This means anyone has the authority to sell the media as long as they pay the flat, agreed upon in advance, same for every single customer the world over, non discriminatory fee.
This single advance would eliminate most if not all piracy from nations rich enough to pay for music.
How does "loser pays" work when a little guy goes after a big company like Apple, Google, or Microsoft with a legitimate complaint but gets defeated because the big company was able to spend 100,000x more on their lawyers?
We've been over this 100 times before.
No win, no fee.
If you've got a solid case, it doesn't matter. lawyers you cant afford will take the case because they'll get paid by the loser.
Under the Ameircan system, how does the little guy defend himself from companies like Apple or Microsoft who are able to spend 100,000 times more on their lawyers. CLUE: they cant. This is the key difference between our two systems is why the likes of the RIAA/MPIAA have not be successful in the UK or Australia compared to their runaway success in the US. When they drop the case in the UK because their evidence is shoddy at best, they are automatically charged the defendants lawyer fees.
The movie studios tried one case in Australia, AFACT vs iinet and lost... now they are paying for iinet's lawyers too.
Under the loser pays system, big guys are afraid of the little guy, not the other way around.
From my experience with hackers, if you say your platform is more challenging to hack, it attracts more hackers to try and hack it. Never taunt happy fun hackers.
Thats why all hackers target Linux/Unix and leave windows alone, because we all know Windows is nowhere near as secure (or can be as secured) as Linux. Therefore according to your theory, because windows is easy to hack it does not attract hackers.
>Nothing sociopathic about that, fuck it happens all the time.
I will just leave this logic as it is.
Sorry, but your point claiming speeding is OK because no-one is in front of you still remains invalid because I forgot a comma. Shock horror, I make mistakes. Which is exactly why speeding is a problem. Dunning-Kruger is no more evident then in drivers who think they are competent at speeds. It is the decreased reaction time that makes people like this dangerous, unable to predict problems and definitely unable to react to them.
So you can leave logic as it is, because your post still makes none.
What makes you think it is overpriced? Compared to many other forms of entertainment,
But we aren't comparing it to other forms of entertainment, we are comparing it to it's contemporaries. When Entertainment widgets A and C cost $2 each and Entertainment widget B costs $4 plus $2 each for the seventeen downloadable content widgets we know that the piss is being taken.
But as I eluded to, there is always some dingbat who tries to justify greedy price rises with semi-retarded comparisons. I'll hit you with the clue by four here, playing with yourself (strangling the one eyed snake, choking charlie till he chunders, you get the picture) is free and by all definitions a form of entertainment, so therefore on a price per hour basis no other form of entertainment should be considered valid.
As a professional video game developer on the same platforms, I have to ask: why are you charging more? The cost of bringing games like this to the market has plummeted for large dev houses compared to their retail cost. Their labor is at a fixed rate and has an easy transition to existing properties like this, leaving just content development and level planning for a "new" rehashed game from one of their franchises.
An increase in marketing.
A few years ago you'd never see a game marketed outside of specific places (game oriented websites or magazines) but now they're on bus stops everywhere in Perth. I'm sure they've got TV advertising too but I don't watch TV any more (ironically, because of the ads).
That kind of coverage isn't cheap.
EA is just in this for money - don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
I think you are full of bullshit, how can you judge an online game if you played it for only 3 days
By playing it.
I guess I'm a lot faster at picking things up then you are. Coming straight off BF BC2 servers BF3 was basically the same thing as BC2 but horribly unbalanced. People who had the upgraded rifles (heavy barrels) would dominate over those who didn't have them. I know this because I unlocked the heavy barrel fairly quickly and just found no challenge after that. Worse yet you didn't need any actual skill to get these things, you just needed to play so if you sucked, you only had to wait longer.
I don't have to spend a month analysing a shit sandwich to know that it tastes bad. BF3 was the same and because I ordered it from the UK (I live in Oz), EA had a full month to get things right AFTER release.
much all battlefields had dlc(they were called expansion/booster pack at the time)
Wrong, an expansion pack is not DLC, an expansion pack does not give an unfair advantage to a player that does not have it. Expansion packs contain more than just new content, they often change gameplay.
Last but not least there isn't a monthly fee
Wait for it, it's coming. EA is going to sucker as much money out of people like you as it can.
I don't really want to pay more for a product, no one does, but I'd be one of those people who'd pay more for BF4. Why?
I wont be. Why?
Because Battlefield 3 was shit. Because they made the unlocables too lopsided, because after they charge you the US$70 which translates into no less then A$150 they still want $20 odd a month for premium which like unlockables, will be so lopsided as to make the game unplayable if you don't pony up the monthly danegeld, sorry, subscription fee.
BF 1942 and BF2 were works of art, BF Bad Company 2 was good, BF3 was just a huge steaming pile of unbalanced crap that I stopped playing after 3 days.
In contrast I don't pay $70 for CoD anymore
I haven't paid for COD since COD United Offensive back when CoD was a decent game.
I don't have a problem paying a bit more for something that's actually worth it, what I wont pay more for is shit.
I do have a problem with paying more, games are overpriced as they are but there's always some numpty that doesn't think when handing over money for the latest call of halo or whatever. To be frank, it's what is killing the games industry by rewarding publishers who release mediocre sequels with a large percentage of the budget dedicated to marketing.
Yes, everyone wants to drive fast. But, what's the trade-off for going a little slower? Oh, that's right... HANDING OVER COMPLETE CONTROL.
If you commute in rush hour traffic, you don't care about the speed limit, because you're not going to get the chance to hit it, anyway.
I say that automated cars will sell very well.
Actually, automated cars will make peak hour quite a bit faster by removing the inattentive and inconsiderate drivers from the road and by picking the best path. Human drivers cause all kinds of problems due to poor decision making, poor driving skills or just plain old arrogance and ignorance. One of the biggest problems in high density traffic are people who change lanes because the one next to them is going slightly faster, this has the effect of slowing down traffic and in some cases, causing an accident as they try to push in. After that we have drivers who aren't travelling at the same speed as other motorists in their lane, trying to force it to go faster by tailgating or travelling slower then the median speed. Also we have a large number of drivers who cannot maintain a constant speed and dither 10 KPH up or down forcing following traffic to do the same. Finally we have just poor path choices, a lot of people font consider where they need to be in 500 metres let alone 5 kilometres down the road, this forces them to make questionable and often dangerous manoeuvres which affect cars behind them (because missing their exit and doing a turning manoeuvre later on is such unacceptable idea).
A lot of times, travelling too close to the car in front creates traffic waves, it does not allow cars behind to maintain a higher speed because there is not enough room for the wave to dissipate before an impact occurs, causing the driver to become part of the wave rather then riding it out.
Automated cars will pick better routes, be more attentive and be able to drive at higher speeds with more dense traffic because it does not demonstrate the kind of behaviour that causes jams and traffic waves.
If there are cars behind you and no one is in front of you, you are not rich, you are not poor, you are a sociopath.
No, who writes this trollop.
If there are cars behind you and no cars in front of you it means that there are no cars in front of you and everyone is travelling at the speed limit. Nothing sociopathic about that, fuck it happens all the time.
By the way, the British film This Is England does a pretty great job of covering the early 80s skinhead scene, and is just a really good film in general.
Same with the Australian Film, Romper Stomper. Displaying the same racist culture in Oz, also a look at Russell Crowe before he started throwing phones at hotel receptionists.
In my experience Apple gear is no more nor less likely to break than other good-quality stuff. Most of the internal components are the same after all. But the recent stuff is harder to repair of course; significantly more so than Lenovo for instance. Have to love a company that actually puts disassembly and repair manuals for their products on the web for anybody to view.
This, statistically a Mac is no more likely to break then a Dell, the difference is the Dell will be out of commission for a day as they've got a NBD on-site support team almost everywhere, with Apple I have to take it to an authorised repairer and wait a week for them to do it, then pick it up myself.
BTW, It's awesome that Lenovo is publishing repair manuals, Dell has been doing the same for years. Not to mention it's dead simple to do easy repairs/upgrades like HDD, RAM or ODD's on most non-Apple computers (HDD and RAM are components people upgrade most often).
Because it references Betteridge's Law of Headlines which states any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no. The rest was just filler to get passed the lameness filter.
Steve Jobs used the analogy of trucks and cars; some of us need trucks for heavy lifting and special tasks, but most of us don't. The PC running Solitaire on a receptionist's desk will probably go away; the engineer's workstation will not.
When did the average person ever need a truck for day to day motoring tasks?
That's where the analogy falls over. If phone processors ever take over from traditional PC innards, it will be because the phone components are in a suitable laptop form factor (or have an external monitor, mouse and KB) and can run general purpose software which pretty much turns them into PC's.
By niche market you mean, the majority of users including business users.
We aren't in the "Post PC era" because if phones take over general purpose computing they simply become the PC.
The entire idea sounds like some idiot fishing for blog hits. The PC isn't going anywhere, the traditional PC form factor is going to stay but if phones become powerful enough, we'll see 15" laptops with the guts of high end phones at less than 1/2 a kilo making them, well, PC's.
PC's will never be niche markets because of the form factor, phones are built for portability, not practical usage. This is the core of their purpose, they are meant to be portable not ubiquitous.
They made everything better. AND they sold the Sizzle, not the steak.
This is exactly what we understand. Apple sold cheap flank steak from Mexico under the guise of it being USDA Prime wagu bred in Japan. They lied about the quality and the origins, to fit in with the analogy.
This is what the haters will never understand. All they see is 6oz bacon wrapped Filet, and say "I could do that cheaper" after looking at the $60 price tag. But what they mean is they can do a 12 oz Flank Steak on a BBQ for $6. It isn't the same.
See my sig about using the word "hater".
All I see is a 150gm flank (sandwich) steak wrapped in bacon and thinking I could get a 300 gm Porterhouse with a nice peppercorn gravy for the same price. Thats how people view the iphone, as more people see through, as you put it "the sizzle and not the steak" the more people are going to see that the "sandwich" steak has been sold at Wagu prices.
Apple doesn't understand the meaning of "copycat" at least not in the sense of when they do/did it.
Younger Steve Jobs understood the importance of copycats in his business model.
There, fixed that for you. Much like young Bill Gates, young Steve Jobs liked to copy other peoples work but didn't like other people to copy the same work. Xerox Parc, CP/M, it does not matter what arrangements were figured out after the fact, both so called "visionaries" copied from real researchers.
As an accident of geography, my town has three power companies. In my corner, luckily, I have the power company that does preventative maintenance and when there's a bad ice storm, we lose power for usually a couple of hours, once nearly a day.
This,
Approx 80% of my power bill goes to infrastructure. I cant even remember the last time I had a brownout and even in the worst storm in Perths history, power was restored to all affected places within a week. Australians, especially Western Australians like to whinge and bitch about high power bills but as per god damn usual fail to see how lucky we have it. You guys are expecting regular brownouts/disruptions, we dont.
Also It's a chilly 16 degrees C here today, so that's one solution to beating the heat... live in bloody Australia (of course this is offset by our 40 degree C summers).
I remember when the AMD 386DX40 was considered to be wickedly fast, except for the Motorolla 68xxx line in the Macs. Now, my router has a more powerful CPU that runs on just 100 milliamps, 5 volts. Although the i7 is today's "wickedly fast" x86 processor, I don't remember really giving all that much of a damned about it. The marketplace has matured, and nobody really cares all that much any more.
Did you get a Core2, i5, or AMD CPU? Would you notice if you had? Chances are that you wouldn't notice the difference.
We've reached the point where the processing requirement of software no longer routinely outweighs the processing power available. So yeah, the difference between a budget AMD and latest i7 is trivial unless you've got some very demanding software (I.E. a database) and then, your performance chips are in the server market. HDD speed is a bigger bottleneck for the consumer these days.
My gaming rig is over 3 years old, It's an AMD Phenom 2 955 with a Geforce 285. High end when I bought it and 3 years on it can still play the latest games on the highest settings. I've made a few minor upgrades (4 to 8 GB of RAM and an SSD) but these were optional, I've had no requirement to replace the machine as the CPU and GPU can keep up with the latest games.
The same is true with most of the software we use, hardware requirements are more than enough to meet its needs. A $500 PC is sufficient to run most things the average person would run. Few people notice any wait time when using their computer (and the young whipper snappers don't remember the wait time loading games from four 720 K floppies because you had no room on your HDD, kids these days).
An emergency claim of patent infringement, surely calling it an "emergency" is taking the piss. Was someone's life or health in danger or just someone's bottom line.
There should be some punishment for misusing patent law and the ITC/courts like this. Perhaps the court should ban the plaintiffs competing product for 6-12 months when an allegation is found to be false...
But if that happened, Apple would just find another legal loophole to exploit I suppose.
2. Most consumers will he happy to get 12M/1M fibre services.
Recent surveys and take up data have suggested a larger than estimated number of consumers will buy the higher speed plans.
3. Consumers will keep buying a voice service to go with their data service!
This bit I doubt, even the best consumer VOIP services in Oz are mediocre (I say this as a Node customer, internet service great, VOIP service severely lacking) as most Australians are using their mobile as their main phone and eschewing land lines.
4. Everybody who buys ADSL or ADSL2+ now will be happy to spend at least as much on NBN services (even though the NBN is effeciently being overbuilt by Telstra 4G that meets the needs of most consumers today).
I believe that this will hold true, A$60-80 p/m is what we expect to pay and comparative to our wages it's not expensive at all. but I believe also the NBN will be slightly cheaper by about $10 ish mainly due to cheaper line rental. I had some data to support this but cant find it ATM (something to do with AVC costs compared to rental prices for copper).
I also don't think LTE (no I will not call it 4G) wont meet the needs of most consumers. Not at the woefully low caps mobile broadband offers. Wireless BB accounts for less than 10% of our total downloads, this percentage is dropping despite the number of mobile BB connections rising. In the 3 months to Dec 2010 wireless accounted for 9% of downloads, in the three months to Dec 2011 wireless accounted for 7% of downloads. Anyone thinking wireless is a replacement for wired connections on a wide scale is fooling themselves something shocking. What this data does support, is the notion more people are getting wireless broadband as a secondary connection, to use as a backup, on the road or tied to a device like a laptop or tablet.
And finally the last MOTHER of an assumption:
6. The NBN will only cost $27bn.
I'll give you this but my money is on a repeat of the Collins class sub project. Delivered on budget but late. Though, even at twice the price the NBN is a bargain, for teleworking alone with increasing in fuel costs and worsening traffic conditions in our major cities.
Well, I think our current Labour government are a lying sack of bastards,
The problem you have here, is the other guys are an even worse sack of lying, cheating bastards... in budgie smugglers.
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What makes them think things should always be the same price, everywhere?
Sure, we're talking about essentially the same thing, but there's a reason why things cost different amounts in various places. Avacadoes are cheaper during avacado season, and cherries/apples/pears/etc. during their respective seasons. They're cheaper near where they are grown. Sometimes, they're not even available due to lack of demand.
It's simple economics. There's little/no reason why globally universal prices should be in place - it's an asinine idea.
Because you're an idiot. Avocado's are real goods requiring real transportation from the fields to the markets.
Digital media has no such constraints. The goods served out of the same server in Europe have the same cost regardless of if they are served to France, Spain or Germany. Why does the price differ for these three countries?
Same as serving them from Japan, NA or Europe into any country in the world. It's an extremely asinine idea to think that digital goods have the same inherent transport costs as perishable goods or even physical goods given the fact they don't need to be shipped any-fucking-where. Local taxes might have given you a crutch to stand your lame point on but I'd just point out that Australia's GST is 10% whilst UK's VAT is 20% yet the UK price is cheaper than the Australian price (and US prices don't include sales tax).
Distributors could use this point when there was a real cost in distributing physical media but since the DVDs are all pressed in the same third world location this has no longer been an excuse (shipment to China to Australia costs no more than shipment from China to the US, especially with the Chinese-Australian free trade agreement) but not when the content is digital (having no physical form).
Australia's government will probably reject this. Geographic IP blocking is already necessary to protect Australians from being able to buy video games that Australia has not classified for elements objectionable to parents.
You;re right that Australia's government will reject that theory now we have an R18 rating ratified by parliament.
Yep, the whole process worked, Michael Atkinson was forced to stand down over voter dissent and R18 was passed.
Amazing isn't it.
As for parents, they've been buying violent games for little Johnny (the generic child, not our former Prime Minister) for longer than the discussion has even been in Parliament because they think their child can handle it. Yep, violent video games have been around for just as long and we have a lower murder rate than the US (1.1 per 100,000 vs 4.5 per 100,000, international average was 7.6).
If you wanted to make the least bit of sense you would have siad:
Which is completely fair and does not require IP blocking NOR PRICE INCREASES for Australian purchasers.
The content that's on Hulu is also on TPB. The only thing that I'm blocked from is paying for it.
Music distributors, are you listening? I want to buy music from an artist I like, but your distribution agreements with iTunes won't let me (legitimately) PURCHASE the music you supposedly want to sell (it's only available in Canada, I live in the USA).
Here in lies one of the other problems.
I wont buy from Apple due to the way they treat their competitors, so I cant buy from Itunes and often here in Oz there is often no alternative.
Licensing should be indiscriminate. A flat license fee per copy sold (yes sales execs, I'm only counting when real money changes hands) should be payable to an independent licensing authority and this fee should be the same for the world over (no one in this day and age gives a shit if it's in US Dollars, Euro, South African Rand or fucking Malaysian Ringit, electronic money costs nothing to change). This means anyone has the authority to sell the media as long as they pay the flat, agreed upon in advance, same for every single customer the world over, non discriminatory fee.
This single advance would eliminate most if not all piracy from nations rich enough to pay for music.
...and watch the judge fine them for contempt of court.
I'd want to see it just for the schadenfreude of seeing Apple lower themselves to using Wingdings.
How does "loser pays" work when a little guy goes after a big company like Apple, Google, or Microsoft with a legitimate complaint but gets defeated because the big company was able to spend 100,000x more on their lawyers?
We've been over this 100 times before.
No win, no fee.
If you've got a solid case, it doesn't matter. lawyers you cant afford will take the case because they'll get paid by the loser.
Under the Ameircan system, how does the little guy defend himself from companies like Apple or Microsoft who are able to spend 100,000 times more on their lawyers. CLUE: they cant. This is the key difference between our two systems is why the likes of the RIAA/MPIAA have not be successful in the UK or Australia compared to their runaway success in the US. When they drop the case in the UK because their evidence is shoddy at best, they are automatically charged the defendants lawyer fees.
The movie studios tried one case in Australia, AFACT vs iinet and lost... now they are paying for iinet's lawyers too.
Under the loser pays system, big guys are afraid of the little guy, not the other way around.
From my experience with hackers, if you say your platform is more challenging to hack, it attracts more hackers to try and hack it. Never taunt happy fun hackers.
Thats why all hackers target Linux/Unix and leave windows alone, because we all know Windows is nowhere near as secure (or can be as secured) as Linux. Therefore according to your theory, because windows is easy to hack it does not attract hackers.
oh wait...
>Nothing sociopathic about that, fuck it happens all the time.
I will just leave this logic as it is.
Sorry, but your point claiming speeding is OK because no-one is in front of you still remains invalid because I forgot a comma. Shock horror, I make mistakes. Which is exactly why speeding is a problem. Dunning-Kruger is no more evident then in drivers who think they are competent at speeds. It is the decreased reaction time that makes people like this dangerous, unable to predict problems and definitely unable to react to them. So you can leave logic as it is, because your post still makes none.
But we aren't comparing it to other forms of entertainment, we are comparing it to it's contemporaries. When Entertainment widgets A and C cost $2 each and Entertainment widget B costs $4 plus $2 each for the seventeen downloadable content widgets we know that the piss is being taken.
But as I eluded to, there is always some dingbat who tries to justify greedy price rises with semi-retarded comparisons. I'll hit you with the clue by four here, playing with yourself (strangling the one eyed snake, choking charlie till he chunders, you get the picture) is free and by all definitions a form of entertainment, so therefore on a price per hour basis no other form of entertainment should be considered valid.
An increase in marketing.
A few years ago you'd never see a game marketed outside of specific places (game oriented websites or magazines) but now they're on bus stops everywhere in Perth. I'm sure they've got TV advertising too but I don't watch TV any more (ironically, because of the ads).
That kind of coverage isn't cheap.
No argument from me.
By playing it.
I guess I'm a lot faster at picking things up then you are. Coming straight off BF BC2 servers BF3 was basically the same thing as BC2 but horribly unbalanced. People who had the upgraded rifles (heavy barrels) would dominate over those who didn't have them. I know this because I unlocked the heavy barrel fairly quickly and just found no challenge after that. Worse yet you didn't need any actual skill to get these things, you just needed to play so if you sucked, you only had to wait longer.
I don't have to spend a month analysing a shit sandwich to know that it tastes bad. BF3 was the same and because I ordered it from the UK (I live in Oz), EA had a full month to get things right AFTER release.
Wrong, an expansion pack is not DLC, an expansion pack does not give an unfair advantage to a player that does not have it. Expansion packs contain more than just new content, they often change gameplay.
Wait for it, it's coming. EA is going to sucker as much money out of people like you as it can.
I wont be. Why?
Because Battlefield 3 was shit. Because they made the unlocables too lopsided, because after they charge you the US$70 which translates into no less then A$150 they still want $20 odd a month for premium which like unlockables, will be so lopsided as to make the game unplayable if you don't pony up the monthly danegeld, sorry, subscription fee.
BF 1942 and BF2 were works of art, BF Bad Company 2 was good, BF3 was just a huge steaming pile of unbalanced crap that I stopped playing after 3 days.
I haven't paid for COD since COD United Offensive back when CoD was a decent game.
I do have a problem with paying more, games are overpriced as they are but there's always some numpty that doesn't think when handing over money for the latest call of halo or whatever. To be frank, it's what is killing the games industry by rewarding publishers who release mediocre sequels with a large percentage of the budget dedicated to marketing.
Yes, everyone wants to drive fast. But, what's the trade-off for going a little slower? Oh, that's right... HANDING OVER COMPLETE CONTROL.
If you commute in rush hour traffic, you don't care about the speed limit, because you're not going to get the chance to hit it, anyway.
I say that automated cars will sell very well.
Actually, automated cars will make peak hour quite a bit faster by removing the inattentive and inconsiderate drivers from the road and by picking the best path. Human drivers cause all kinds of problems due to poor decision making, poor driving skills or just plain old arrogance and ignorance. One of the biggest problems in high density traffic are people who change lanes because the one next to them is going slightly faster, this has the effect of slowing down traffic and in some cases, causing an accident as they try to push in. After that we have drivers who aren't travelling at the same speed as other motorists in their lane, trying to force it to go faster by tailgating or travelling slower then the median speed. Also we have a large number of drivers who cannot maintain a constant speed and dither 10 KPH up or down forcing following traffic to do the same. Finally we have just poor path choices, a lot of people font consider where they need to be in 500 metres let alone 5 kilometres down the road, this forces them to make questionable and often dangerous manoeuvres which affect cars behind them (because missing their exit and doing a turning manoeuvre later on is such unacceptable idea).
A lot of times, travelling too close to the car in front creates traffic waves, it does not allow cars behind to maintain a higher speed because there is not enough room for the wave to dissipate before an impact occurs, causing the driver to become part of the wave rather then riding it out.
Automated cars will pick better routes, be more attentive and be able to drive at higher speeds with more dense traffic because it does not demonstrate the kind of behaviour that causes jams and traffic waves.
If there are cars behind you and no one is in front of you, you are not rich, you are not poor, you are a sociopath.
No, who writes this trollop.
If there are cars behind you and no cars in front of you it means that there are no cars in front of you and everyone is travelling at the speed limit. Nothing sociopathic about that, fuck it happens all the time.
By the way, the British film This Is England does a pretty great job of covering the early 80s skinhead scene, and is just a really good film in general.
Same with the Australian Film, Romper Stomper. Displaying the same racist culture in Oz, also a look at Russell Crowe before he started throwing phones at hotel receptionists.
In my experience Apple gear is no more nor less likely to break than other good-quality stuff. Most of the internal components are the same after all. But the recent stuff is harder to repair of course; significantly more so than Lenovo for instance. Have to love a company that actually puts disassembly and repair manuals for their products on the web for anybody to view.
This, statistically a Mac is no more likely to break then a Dell, the difference is the Dell will be out of commission for a day as they've got a NBD on-site support team almost everywhere, with Apple I have to take it to an authorised repairer and wait a week for them to do it, then pick it up myself.
BTW, It's awesome that Lenovo is publishing repair manuals, Dell has been doing the same for years. Not to mention it's dead simple to do easy repairs/upgrades like HDD, RAM or ODD's on most non-Apple computers (HDD and RAM are components people upgrade most often).
How the hell did this get insightful?
Because it references Betteridge's Law of Headlines which states any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no. The rest was just filler to get passed the lameness filter.
Steve Jobs used the analogy of trucks and cars; some of us need trucks for heavy lifting and special tasks, but most of us don't. The PC running Solitaire on a receptionist's desk will probably go away; the engineer's workstation will not.
When did the average person ever need a truck for day to day motoring tasks?
That's where the analogy falls over. If phone processors ever take over from traditional PC innards, it will be because the phone components are in a suitable laptop form factor (or have an external monitor, mouse and KB) and can run general purpose software which pretty much turns them into PC's.
You, are a niche market.
By niche market you mean, the majority of users including business users.
We aren't in the "Post PC era" because if phones take over general purpose computing they simply become the PC.
The entire idea sounds like some idiot fishing for blog hits. The PC isn't going anywhere, the traditional PC form factor is going to stay but if phones become powerful enough, we'll see 15" laptops with the guts of high end phones at less than 1/2 a kilo making them, well, PC's.
PC's will never be niche markets because of the form factor, phones are built for portability, not practical usage. This is the core of their purpose, they are meant to be portable not ubiquitous.
They made everything better. AND they sold the Sizzle, not the steak.
This is exactly what we understand. Apple sold cheap flank steak from Mexico under the guise of it being USDA Prime wagu bred in Japan. They lied about the quality and the origins, to fit in with the analogy.
This is what the haters will never understand. All they see is 6oz bacon wrapped Filet, and say "I could do that cheaper" after looking at the $60 price tag. But what they mean is they can do a 12 oz Flank Steak on a BBQ for $6. It isn't the same.
See my sig about using the word "hater". All I see is a 150gm flank (sandwich) steak wrapped in bacon and thinking I could get a 300 gm Porterhouse with a nice peppercorn gravy for the same price. Thats how people view the iphone, as more people see through, as you put it "the sizzle and not the steak" the more people are going to see that the "sandwich" steak has been sold at Wagu prices.
Apple doesn't understand the meaning of "copycat" at least not in the sense of when they do/did it.
Younger Steve Jobs understood the importance of copycats in his business model.
There, fixed that for you. Much like young Bill Gates, young Steve Jobs liked to copy other peoples work but didn't like other people to copy the same work. Xerox Parc, CP/M, it does not matter what arrangements were figured out after the fact, both so called "visionaries" copied from real researchers.
QUIT CRYING, AND PLAN + INVEST $$$ BETTER.
As an accident of geography, my town has three power companies. In my corner, luckily, I have the power company that does preventative maintenance and when there's a bad ice storm, we lose power for usually a couple of hours, once nearly a day.
This,
Approx 80% of my power bill goes to infrastructure. I cant even remember the last time I had a brownout and even in the worst storm in Perths history, power was restored to all affected places within a week. Australians, especially Western Australians like to whinge and bitch about high power bills but as per god damn usual fail to see how lucky we have it. You guys are expecting regular brownouts/disruptions, we dont.
Also It's a chilly 16 degrees C here today, so that's one solution to beating the heat... live in bloody Australia (of course this is offset by our 40 degree C summers).
Meh.
I remember when the AMD 386DX40 was considered to be wickedly fast, except for the Motorolla 68xxx line in the Macs. Now, my router has a more powerful CPU that runs on just 100 milliamps, 5 volts. Although the i7 is today's "wickedly fast" x86 processor, I don't remember really giving all that much of a damned about it. The marketplace has matured, and nobody really cares all that much any more.
Did you get a Core2, i5, or AMD CPU? Would you notice if you had? Chances are that you wouldn't notice the difference.
We've reached the point where the processing requirement of software no longer routinely outweighs the processing power available. So yeah, the difference between a budget AMD and latest i7 is trivial unless you've got some very demanding software (I.E. a database) and then, your performance chips are in the server market. HDD speed is a bigger bottleneck for the consumer these days.
My gaming rig is over 3 years old, It's an AMD Phenom 2 955 with a Geforce 285. High end when I bought it and 3 years on it can still play the latest games on the highest settings. I've made a few minor upgrades (4 to 8 GB of RAM and an SSD) but these were optional, I've had no requirement to replace the machine as the CPU and GPU can keep up with the latest games.
The same is true with most of the software we use, hardware requirements are more than enough to meet its needs. A $500 PC is sufficient to run most things the average person would run. Few people notice any wait time when using their computer (and the young whipper snappers don't remember the wait time loading games from four 720 K floppies because you had no room on your HDD, kids these days).
An emergency claim of patent infringement, surely calling it an "emergency" is taking the piss. Was someone's life or health in danger or just someone's bottom line.
There should be some punishment for misusing patent law and the ITC/courts like this. Perhaps the court should ban the plaintiffs competing product for 6-12 months when an allegation is found to be false...
But if that happened, Apple would just find another legal loophole to exploit I suppose.
Recent surveys and take up data have suggested a larger than estimated number of consumers will buy the higher speed plans.
This bit I doubt, even the best consumer VOIP services in Oz are mediocre (I say this as a Node customer, internet service great, VOIP service severely lacking) as most Australians are using their mobile as their main phone and eschewing land lines.
I believe that this will hold true, A$60-80 p/m is what we expect to pay and comparative to our wages it's not expensive at all. but I believe also the NBN will be slightly cheaper by about $10 ish mainly due to cheaper line rental. I had some data to support this but cant find it ATM (something to do with AVC costs compared to rental prices for copper).
I also don't think LTE (no I will not call it 4G) wont meet the needs of most consumers. Not at the woefully low caps mobile broadband offers. Wireless BB accounts for less than 10% of our total downloads, this percentage is dropping despite the number of mobile BB connections rising. In the 3 months to Dec 2010 wireless accounted for 9% of downloads, in the three months to Dec 2011 wireless accounted for 7% of downloads. Anyone thinking wireless is a replacement for wired connections on a wide scale is fooling themselves something shocking. What this data does support, is the notion more people are getting wireless broadband as a secondary connection, to use as a backup, on the road or tied to a device like a laptop or tablet.
And finally the last MOTHER of an assumption: 6. The NBN will only cost $27bn.
I'll give you this but my money is on a repeat of the Collins class sub project. Delivered on budget but late. Though, even at twice the price the NBN is a bargain, for teleworking alone with increasing in fuel costs and worsening traffic conditions in our major cities.
The problem you have here, is the other guys are an even worse sack of lying, cheating bastards... in budgie smugglers.
Maybe Australians will see their Fair Use rights expanded in a time when it's in fashion to expand copyright protections.
After spraying my keyboard with Pepsi, I honestly couldn't stop laughing....
Good luck with that.
Yes, Pepsi is hideous, you are right to spit that out but good luck with your laughing issue as well.