So after Katrina I decide to drop the $300 for an "authentic" stitched Saints jersey of my beloved Saints. Google showed quite a discrepancy in price though - $300 at the NFL Shop versus $40 on eBay. Enough to warrant some research, anyway. It only took a few mins to realize the $40 version was a knockoff but that only piqued my curiosity more. How could they produce it so much cheaper, etc? So I looked into it. Yeah, maybe 25 years ago "knockoff" meant inferior look-a-like materials and craftsmanship, but not any more. The Reebok plant that made the "real" jerseys was like next door to the Chinese factory making the knockoffs using the same fabric and thread from the same supplier as the "legit" plant next door. About the only difference I could find in the production technique was quality control - the "authentic" brand actually had a QC guy that would inspect and reject stock that may have been sub-par so no chance it could be sold to the public; the knockoff factory: not so much. That quality does add value, just not $300 versus $40 worth of value.
The moral of the story: I used to believe in the anti-counterfeit argument back when "counterfeit" meant inferior quality made by slave-labor in sweatshops overseas. Unfortunately since then these same manufacturers moved their factories to exploit that very same slave labor and sweatshops overseas so the execs could shift the wages of those previously "overpaid" workers into their own pockets. So screw 'em. When my jersey eventually falls apart (5 years and still going) I'll just drop another $40 to replace it.
In order to figure that out on a slot machine in a casino it would take much more cash than he won by exploiting it. Only a couple hundred hours, right?
People should read the details of the story. This guy just happened to "figure out" that if he convinced a casino employee to manually put the slot machine in Double-Up mode (off by default) and then press a sequence of keys the machine would pay out.
There's no way someone just figures this out. An insider had to have helped: either alerting him to a software bug or purposefully placing a back door in the code.
The Electoral College is PRECISELY why this MATTERS SO MUCH.
First, the EC is in the Constitution, and thus would require a bit more than a 'law change' to undo.
Second, the President is chosen by the Electoral College which is comprised of Electors chosen by each state as they see fit. The number of Electors per state is determined by population plus two (# of Representatives + # of Senators).
Every method to choose those Electors entails a popular vote of the population at one (or many) stages of the process.
So, one need only manipulate the outcomes in a few states to swing an entire Presidential election. In the past, manipulating an election required the involvement of many complicit people (i.e. well funded large conspiracy). With electronic voting, it's conceivable that a single well-placed agent can fix an election in such a way that might be impossible to detect, much less prove.
Back to pen and paper. It's the only way. Stakes are way way too high.
I was a baggage-handler while in college - 1995ish - on the night shift. The last few flights of the night, we cleaned out the interiors of the planes and moved them away from the gates for turn-around the next morning (only had two gates). I've been in the cockpit behind the stick of many 727's, 737's, 757's and MD-88's directing that pushback with all the comms active and my cellphone did the same thing to those systems that it does to your PC speakers when it rang.
Perhaps technology has improved. I'd rather not take the chance.
How dare you foreigner try to tell America how to run it's government? We tell you, remember?
Seriously, government rule by popular vote would be very bad in the US since population is so unevenly distributed. If popular vote decided the presidency, then a candidate could limit his campaign to 3 states and a dozen metro cites, promising the world, all to the detriment of those of us living in the other 90% of the country.
Hence the wisdom of the Electoral Congress. It just requires a bit of critical thought, which is just too much to ask for many.
"It is like pharmacies; some refuse to stock generic drugs, but they will stock different kinds of drugs that do the same thing (like Ambien and Lunesta). Should they be sued with an anti-trust for not giving the generic drug companies a chance?"
If they colluded with the drug companies to exclude generics in order to maintain artificial profits, then ABSOLUTELY YES.
Again, if the store made the decision 100% on their own then they should rightfully suffer.
But this has been going on for years: HP has tried everything to put the refillers out of business. FUD about lawsuits, patent infringement, etc... just to prevent these competing products from being sold.
HP sells inkjet printers at a loss. I.E. the printer costs more to make than they sell it for, making up the loss in inflated ink sales. Gillette does the same: give away razor handles but charge astronimically for the replacement blades. Game-console mfgrs also sell their consoles at a loss and expect to make up that revenue from software sales. In those examples, the "consumables" have proprietary and legal aspects that protect them (patented connectors for blades and DMCA/encryption for software). HP tried the lawsuit tactic, and if I remember correctly were moderately successful against clone carts. But since their patents don't protect against using a syringe to refill their carts they tried the firmware lockouts to prevent refills. This was slapped down. Now it's time for the back-room deal with retailers... Anything to protect the cash cow that is $8000 PER GALLON ink. If you filled an Olympic-size swimming pool with ink from HP or Lexmark inkjet cartridges, it would cost $5.9 billion.
An earlier post mentioned that HP ink has recently come down in price. Why is that? Competition! If they had succeeded in suppressing the competition (as they have at Staples), would those prices have dropped? Odds are, they would have RISEN.
It might even go deeper. Staples might not have been coerced, but agreed to go along with HP in order to protect margins. That would be collusion to price-fix IMO.
An important distinction needs to be made in this debate. I agree that a store should be able to sell whatever it wants, and not sell whatever it doesn't want.
The problem, and the anti-trust issue, is that a manufacturer of a product is trying to coerce stores into not selling a competing product.
So Microsoft should be able to do the same? Extort their vendors into excluding competing products? US DOJ and the EU disagree with you.
"If the market wants the excluded product they will find ways to get it..."
- not if the market has no idea the excluded product even exists, and that's HP's ultimate goal. I'm even surprised by how many people I work with who are unaware of the alternatives to $8000/gal HP-branded ink...
"How is this restraint of trade? Who's restrained?"
Restraint of trade in that consumers aren't able to choose between competing products. One could argue that you don't have to shop at Staples - just go somewhere else. But HP's goal was (is) to remove that competition from all stores. So far only Staples has gone along.
I'm not a lawyer, so clearly there's a flaw in my common-sense approach :)
It isn't the price at the pump so much, it's the price of everything else. Yeah, $3/gal gas sucks, but $3/gal ethanol to go buy a $20 hamburger and fries sucks more.
Ethanol made from sugarcane costs roughly $1 less per gallon than ethanol produced from corn - at the pump IN BRAZIL. You still haven't figured out how much it would cost (or better yet HOW) to transport enough ethanol from Brazil to replace the 140 billion gal of gas used in the US per year.
Yes, more ethanol can be produced from sugarcane than corn. At a FAR greater cost! Why aren't the corn-subsidy folks pushing cane? Instead of Big-Oil, start thinking in terms of Big-Corn. Same motive at work. I'm in Louisiana, and our sugarcane industry is in dire straights. They've been trying for years to push their ethanol potential, but the simple FACT is that it IS NOT economical to produce.
In fact it takes more energy to refine a unit of ethanol than the amount of energy generated by that same unit of ethanol. Hello? This thing on?
The bright side to high oil prices means that it IS finally economical to employ the technologies necessary to extract the harder-to-refine oil still in US soil. Drill away...
Is it really cheaper to import ethanol once the transport cost is factored in? Today, we import crude oil not gasoline. Most gasoline is refined in the US.
Last I checked, Brazil is smaller than the US by about 13%. In order to replace gasoline with ethanol, all of Brazil would need to be bulldozed and planted with corn. Who needs rainforests! Because Ethanol is better for the environment!
My new Impala has an E85 Flex-Fuel engine. Although I got an insane deal, E85 cars still cost more than their petro-only counterparts. Here's the truth: it's the same engine. Ethanol is more corrosive than gasoline so the engine, sensors, etc have extra corrosion-resistant coatings. Replacement parts come at the same extra premium.
Ethanol is more expensive than gasoline at the pump, and isn't even for sale in my state! In order for the math to work out so 'Ethanol is cheaper than gas' you must factor in the "Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit". If Ethanol were the standard, how long do you think the tax credit would last? Pray there isn't a drought and Ethanol will cost triple...
If Ethanol gives you 20mpg, the same amount of gasoline gives 30mpg. So it takes 30% more of a more expensive fuel to equal gasoline? Cheaper? Cleaner?
For the love of all that is holy (and my sanity) please do some research before simply embracing a slogan just because it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy.
Eliot is right. Not just ag foods will increase in price - ALL food will.
What do cows eat? Corn (primary grain in feed for all farm animals). But we'll just import more beef from China? Nice plan.
Sure, you can regrow corn. With water. Lots and lots and lots of water. Water resources are already frightfully scarce.
If ethanol replaced gas, the amount of farmland needed to convert to corn crops would cause such a shortage of other crops their prices would rise dramatically.
Small farmers? Where? That lifestyle? Farm-Aid didn't work, and there aren't many small farms any more. Lots and lots of corporate conglomerate farms have long since bought most out. Disagree? How many small farmers contribute to the massive PR machine? Then who does?
The corn subsidies are in jeopardy without the ethanol myth. Before ethanol refining was on the map, those subsidies brought us the obesity epidemic in this country a la high fructose corn syrup. It's also all but killed off domestic sugarcane farming, which isn't nearly as bad for you as HFCS.
I could go on and on.... but it's just a bad idea, plain and simple. Kills me how susceptible the public has become to flashy ads and groupthink.
Everyone should re-read My2Cents comment and let it sink in what interesting times we are fortunate to be living in. It wasn't 75 years ago that a simple letter to England could take a month to arrive and then another month for a reply - and that's if the ships didn't sink (and if they did on either leg, you'd have no way of knowing). In the past, wars have been started (Lusitania) and prolongued (Battle of New Orleans) because of such lag.
Globalism kills
So after Katrina I decide to drop the $300 for an "authentic" stitched Saints jersey of my beloved Saints. Google showed quite a discrepancy in price though - $300 at the NFL Shop versus $40 on eBay. Enough to warrant some research, anyway. It only took a few mins to realize the $40 version was a knockoff but that only piqued my curiosity more. How could they produce it so much cheaper, etc? So I looked into it. Yeah, maybe 25 years ago "knockoff" meant inferior look-a-like materials and craftsmanship, but not any more. The Reebok plant that made the "real" jerseys was like next door to the Chinese factory making the knockoffs using the same fabric and thread from the same supplier as the "legit" plant next door. About the only difference I could find in the production technique was quality control - the "authentic" brand actually had a QC guy that would inspect and reject stock that may have been sub-par so no chance it could be sold to the public; the knockoff factory: not so much. That quality does add value, just not $300 versus $40 worth of value.
The moral of the story: I used to believe in the anti-counterfeit argument back when "counterfeit" meant inferior quality made by slave-labor in sweatshops overseas. Unfortunately since then these same manufacturers moved their factories to exploit that very same slave labor and sweatshops overseas so the execs could shift the wages of those previously "overpaid" workers into their own pockets. So screw 'em. When my jersey eventually falls apart (5 years and still going) I'll just drop another $40 to replace it.
What argument?
"There's some argument that the morals clause is "broad and ambiguous," making it unenforceable, but that seems like a stretch."
There's no argument whatsoever. He had the choice and he chose to sign the contract.
Re: Re: insider help
In order to figure that out on a slot machine in a casino it would take much more cash than he won by exploiting it. Only a couple hundred hours, right?
insider help
People should read the details of the story. This guy just happened to "figure out" that if he convinced a casino employee to manually put the slot machine in Double-Up mode (off by default) and then press a sequence of keys the machine would pay out.
There's no way someone just figures this out. An insider had to have helped: either alerting him to a software bug or purposefully placing a back door in the code.
Re: DOES NOT MATTER: Popular vote does not win the election
The Electoral College is PRECISELY why this MATTERS SO MUCH.
First, the EC is in the Constitution, and thus would require a bit more than a 'law change' to undo.
Second, the President is chosen by the Electoral College which is comprised of Electors chosen by each state as they see fit. The number of Electors per state is determined by population plus two (# of Representatives + # of Senators).
Every method to choose those Electors entails a popular vote of the population at one (or many) stages of the process.
So, one need only manipulate the outcomes in a few states to swing an entire Presidential election. In the past, manipulating an election required the involvement of many complicit people (i.e. well funded large conspiracy). With electronic voting, it's conceivable that a single well-placed agent can fix an election in such a way that might be impossible to detect, much less prove.
Back to pen and paper. It's the only way. Stakes are way way too high.
Re: it could be a problem
I was a baggage-handler while in college - 1995ish - on the night shift. The last few flights of the night, we cleaned out the interiors of the planes and moved them away from the gates for turn-around the next morning (only had two gates). I've been in the cockpit behind the stick of many 727's, 737's, 757's and MD-88's directing that pushback with all the comms active and my cellphone did the same thing to those systems that it does to your PC speakers when it rang.
Perhaps technology has improved. I'd rather not take the chance.
Fools Republican bash and most of them are closeted Republicans.
There! Take that!
Re: Proportional Representation
How dare you foreigner try to tell America how to run it's government? We tell you, remember?
Seriously, government rule by popular vote would be very bad in the US since population is so unevenly distributed. If popular vote decided the presidency, then a candidate could limit his campaign to 3 states and a dozen metro cites, promising the world, all to the detriment of those of us living in the other 90% of the country.
Hence the wisdom of the Electoral Congress. It just requires a bit of critical thought, which is just too much to ask for many.
Re: Re: Re: Re: important distiinction
Perhaps you might want to do a bit of research. Your own example has been ruled illegal, MANY times:
OVERVIEW OF FTC ANTITRUST ACTIONS IN PHARMACEUTICAL SERVICES AND PRODUCTS
http://www.ftc.gov/bc/0608rxupdate.pdf
Re: Re: important distiinction
"It is like pharmacies; some refuse to stock generic drugs, but they will stock different kinds of drugs that do the same thing (like Ambien and Lunesta). Should they be sued with an anti-trust for not giving the generic drug companies a chance?"
If they colluded with the drug companies to exclude generics in order to maintain artificial profits, then ABSOLUTELY YES.
Re: Re: important distiinction
Coercion means lack of choice.
Again, if the store made the decision 100% on their own then they should rightfully suffer.
But this has been going on for years: HP has tried everything to put the refillers out of business. FUD about lawsuits, patent infringement, etc... just to prevent these competing products from being sold.
HP sells inkjet printers at a loss. I.E. the printer costs more to make than they sell it for, making up the loss in inflated ink sales. Gillette does the same: give away razor handles but charge astronimically for the replacement blades. Game-console mfgrs also sell their consoles at a loss and expect to make up that revenue from software sales. In those examples, the "consumables" have proprietary and legal aspects that protect them (patented connectors for blades and DMCA/encryption for software). HP tried the lawsuit tactic, and if I remember correctly were moderately successful against clone carts. But since their patents don't protect against using a syringe to refill their carts they tried the firmware lockouts to prevent refills. This was slapped down. Now it's time for the back-room deal with retailers... Anything to protect the cash cow that is $8000 PER GALLON ink. If you filled an Olympic-size swimming pool with ink from HP or Lexmark inkjet cartridges, it would cost $5.9 billion.
An earlier post mentioned that HP ink has recently come down in price. Why is that? Competition! If they had succeeded in suppressing the competition (as they have at Staples), would those prices have dropped? Odds are, they would have RISEN.
It might even go deeper. Staples might not have been coerced, but agreed to go along with HP in order to protect margins. That would be collusion to price-fix IMO.
important distiinction
An important distinction needs to be made in this debate. I agree that a store should be able to sell whatever it wants, and not sell whatever it doesn't want.
The problem, and the anti-trust issue, is that a manufacturer of a product is trying to coerce stores into not selling a competing product.
This is a no-brainer to me.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Plausible Antitrust Case
So Microsoft should be able to do the same? Extort their vendors into excluding competing products? US DOJ and the EU disagree with you.
"If the market wants the excluded product they will find ways to get it..."
- not if the market has no idea the excluded product even exists, and that's HP's ultimate goal. I'm even surprised by how many people I work with who are unaware of the alternatives to $8000/gal HP-branded ink...
Re: Antitrust? How about just shopping somewhere
If HP is allowed to do what it's trying, it will become VERY difficult...
Re: Re: Plausible Antitrust Case
"How is this restraint of trade? Who's restrained?"
Restraint of trade in that consumers aren't able to choose between competing products. One could argue that you don't have to shop at Staples - just go somewhere else. But HP's goal was (is) to remove that competition from all stores. So far only Staples has gone along.
I'm not a lawyer, so clearly there's a flaw in my common-sense approach :)
Re: Act On It
It isn't the price at the pump so much, it's the price of everything else. Yeah, $3/gal gas sucks, but $3/gal ethanol to go buy a $20 hamburger and fries sucks more.
Ethanol made from sugarcane costs roughly $1 less per gallon than ethanol produced from corn - at the pump IN BRAZIL. You still haven't figured out how much it would cost (or better yet HOW) to transport enough ethanol from Brazil to replace the 140 billion gal of gas used in the US per year.
Yes, more ethanol can be produced from sugarcane than corn. At a FAR greater cost! Why aren't the corn-subsidy folks pushing cane? Instead of Big-Oil, start thinking in terms of Big-Corn. Same motive at work. I'm in Louisiana, and our sugarcane industry is in dire straights. They've been trying for years to push their ethanol potential, but the simple FACT is that it IS NOT economical to produce.
In fact it takes more energy to refine a unit of ethanol than the amount of energy generated by that same unit of ethanol. Hello? This thing on?
The bright side to high oil prices means that it IS finally economical to employ the technologies necessary to extract the harder-to-refine oil still in US soil. Drill away...
Re: Cleaner and Cheaper
Is it really cheaper to import ethanol once the transport cost is factored in? Today, we import crude oil not gasoline. Most gasoline is refined in the US.
Last I checked, Brazil is smaller than the US by about 13%. In order to replace gasoline with ethanol, all of Brazil would need to be bulldozed and planted with corn. Who needs rainforests! Because Ethanol is better for the environment!
My new Impala has an E85 Flex-Fuel engine. Although I got an insane deal, E85 cars still cost more than their petro-only counterparts. Here's the truth: it's the same engine. Ethanol is more corrosive than gasoline so the engine, sensors, etc have extra corrosion-resistant coatings. Replacement parts come at the same extra premium.
Ethanol is more expensive than gasoline at the pump, and isn't even for sale in my state! In order for the math to work out so 'Ethanol is cheaper than gas' you must factor in the "Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit". If Ethanol were the standard, how long do you think the tax credit would last? Pray there isn't a drought and Ethanol will cost triple...
If Ethanol gives you 20mpg, the same amount of gasoline gives 30mpg. So it takes 30% more of a more expensive fuel to equal gasoline? Cheaper? Cleaner?
For the love of all that is holy (and my sanity) please do some research before simply embracing a slogan just because it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy.
Re: Waste
And the by-products resulting from refining oil into gasoline are....
Used to make damn near everything in your home, the clothes you wear, shoes on your feet, etc...
Eliot is right. Not just ag foods will increase in price - ALL food will.
What do cows eat? Corn (primary grain in feed for all farm animals). But we'll just import more beef from China? Nice plan.
Sure, you can regrow corn. With water. Lots and lots and lots of water. Water resources are already frightfully scarce.
If ethanol replaced gas, the amount of farmland needed to convert to corn crops would cause such a shortage of other crops their prices would rise dramatically.
Small farmers? Where? That lifestyle? Farm-Aid didn't work, and there aren't many small farms any more. Lots and lots of corporate conglomerate farms have long since bought most out. Disagree? How many small farmers contribute to the massive PR machine? Then who does?
The corn subsidies are in jeopardy without the ethanol myth. Before ethanol refining was on the map, those subsidies brought us the obesity epidemic in this country a la high fructose corn syrup. It's also all but killed off domestic sugarcane farming, which isn't nearly as bad for you as HFCS.
I could go on and on.... but it's just a bad idea, plain and simple. Kills me how susceptible the public has become to flashy ads and groupthink.
Re: Whats new anyway
Everyone should re-read My2Cents comment and let it sink in what interesting times we are fortunate to be living in. It wasn't 75 years ago that a simple letter to England could take a month to arrive and then another month for a reply - and that's if the ships didn't sink (and if they did on either leg, you'd have no way of knowing). In the past, wars have been started (Lusitania) and prolongued (Battle of New Orleans) because of such lag.