30,000? And where did you get that number?

The key words in that are " large businesses'". Small and medium size companies often try and prevent from getting tech that is completely outdated, but they often have small IT budgets and departments. This means they have to choose what is more cost effective... spending ten's of thousands of dollars maintaining a system that meets their needs works or spending hundred's of thousands upgrading a system simply because it is old. Those upgrades do happen occasionally, but not often. One of my friends works in IT a large company... he is still a relatively low ranking employee at his company, and yet, the number of employees that he has working directly under him is about the same size as the entire IT department at my country. When we talk, we are greatly amused at the differences in the working environments and problems we face. When an IT guy says they cannot understand why a company still uses technology X or has not upgraded to Y when X still works, I can tell they have never worked for a small company that views technology as little more than a necessary evil (as far as budgets are concerned). The smaller companies usually recognize that upgrading to various things could offer definite advantages... but most times, upgrading is not economically feasible. I know budget plays a role in every company, but It seems to play a much larger role in small and medium size companies that do not produce IT related products.

My $0.02

That is a big thing. Other departments that use systems hate any changes that disrupt their work. Learning new systems takes work and slows them down and often takes away what they see as advantages. On our old green screens, many users have key sequences memorized so they can carry out various actions (such as data entry) with only occasional glances at the screen. Forcing them to use a new tool takes that away that ability until they relearn it. Even if the new tool offers new feature or options, the user will consider it to be an inconvenience unless it benefits them, personally. If they can see how it benefits other departments, they will usually (grudgingly) accept the changes. If it only improves things on the back end (that only IT people see), they will avoid using it until we force them to use the new tool and take away the old tool.

Not only that, but many users will often use applications incorrectly unless it has checks to prevent this. If a new application implements something to prevent that misuse, the user will complain that the program has a "bug" because they can no longer do something. From their perspective, this is an inconvenience and a disruption because it forces them to change the way they do things without providing them with any benefits. For example, an old version of one of our apps lacked certain data entry checks. So the data entered by one department would often end up creating new data records because one of the users was too lazy to look up an existing record. This meant we would have multiple data records all representing the same supplier or multiple records representing the same customer. While this would occasionally affect other departments, it did not cause that department many (if any) problems... so they didn't see any problem with their way of doing things. When an updated tool was deployed, those users complained that it didn't work right or it was forcing them to do extra work (just a couple seconds), when in reality, it was preventing problems in other departments and saving another guy from spending time every week cleaning up data.

"Don't want a gaming console that requires a persistent internet connection? 'Don't buy it.'"

There, fixed it.

Your description of time is to general and relative.

Similar things can be said about those that believe the government has to regulate everything or constantly increase the national debt in an attempt to stimulate the economy, while ignoring empirical evidence that says it won't work.

The thing is, economics is not a hard science in which you can come up with a theory, test it and find you have a plausible theory or an error in your theory. One theory or model will not always work in every case and, if you look, you can find instances and empirical data the contradicts most models at some point. If there was a perfect model, you would have a lot more people that know exactly how to invest without risk. Faith in a free market is not some delusion as your post implies.... it is just not the cure-all solution that.

You ignored a key part of his argument. Hey said most albums only have a couple song that people want. I happen to agree with this. I haven't bought a lot of mp3s from amazon, but the ones I have seen have an average price of about $1.29. If you actually want an entire album, then I agree that it is worth a little more to get a physical item. However, if I only want 2 songs for a total of $2.58, I cannot justify spending $16.79 + shipping to get several songs I do not want. I added shipping to the cost because I don't have amazon prime and that price doesn't qualify for super saver.

The bar must be empty because the work never ends.

<sarcasm> And I am sure that by comparing this country's statistics related to one subject with the statistics of other countries with different populations densities, cultures, stances on various political and moral topics, availability of mental health treatment, demographics, crime rates (in crimes that are often related to gun violence and crimes that are not), gang activity, methods for punishing crime, and economic climates, you will get you perfectly accurate results. </sarcasm>

Correlation or Causation?

The primary purpose of a gun is to propel a bullet to hit what the shooter wants. It is designed to ABLE to kill things (including people), but they are not designed so that killing is their primary function. I have several guns, and guess what? The only thing I have ever shot is targets. Am I using them for something other than their intended purpose? No. My grandfather used to go hunting. He killed deer. Was he misusing it because he was not killing people, even though you claim that is their purpose? No. People that say guns are designed for killing people are often the people that do not have any interest in them and do not know much about the other aspects of their uses. If you aren't interested in guns and don't know much about them, fine... but don't make claims about them when your only knowledge of them comes from the skewed statistics from political groups and the media... which is often very inaccurate.

Some people want guns to be more regulated. I can understand why they would want that... but why don't they focus on enforcing the existing laws as well? I watched one of Feinstein's hearings (she is the CA senator pushing the new gun control laws) in which she had a police commissioner come in and support her bill by answering questions. He pointed out that the background checks stopped thousands ( I think it was roughly 10,000) of people from illegally acquiring guns. That is probably true. However, an opposing senator asked how many of those were actually prosecuted for trying to illegally obtain these guns and the commissioner didn't have any idea. The actual records show that only 18 were taken to court. They would have had to commit a felony by lying on forms that must be completed before a gun shop would even call in a background check. The commissioner responded by stating the police department didn't have time to go after those 'minor offenses' because they were spending their time going after the important ones, such as the murders and robberies caused by guns. I understand that they may not have the resources to go after all of them, but what good are more laws going to be when they won't prosecute the 10,000 obvious felons that were trying to illegally obtain guns? How many of these felons went on illegally obtain the guns through other means to commit the crimes that the commissioner is focusing on? I know there are other mean in which people can try to obtain guns illegally and that people want more laws to try and prevent that. But will making more guns illegal when criminals are not prosecuted with the existing laws in some of the most obvious open & shut cases you can get? I feel that sometimes the 'gun laws only affect the law abiding citizens' argument is overused.... but with examples like this, can you really say that claim doesn't have some validity?

I think I saw this on House.

Your explanation of the prices almost makes it sound as if you believe he should be happy he is only paying $18,000 for the 1.5 day stay in a woman's health room, $17,000 for the emergency fees, and other fees ranging from $5,000-10,000. Granted, that is a lot cheaper than the $170,000-250,000 you estimated, but why are those prices that high to begin with? Seriously why does an or cost $100 per minute? I understand that some of things are expensive when prepared for a medical environment and that other costs, such as mal-practice insurance, can cost a great deal as well. But, the very fact a health care provide can pay its employees and keep its doors open (if not expand & upgrade) after negotiating prices that reduce their income by hundreds of thousands of dollars for one person should tell you that things are being over charged. I know that not everyone will have charges that are that high, so the healthcare provider will not be losing hundreds of thousands on everyone... but you must also remember that my procedures cost much more and they will 'lose' a lot of money on them.

Translation: Very small fraction of their customer base has excessive amounts of money laying around to throw at TWC's overpriced and capped services.

Why does it have to solve a problem? If you are on Slashdot, surely you can understand that some things have a 'geek factor' and people want to buy or make one because of that.

Sony's poor decisions that negatively impact and general lack of concern for what the user wants are a couple of the reasons that make the Xbox 360 far more popular than the PS3 (at least with the people I know). The Xbox 360 is not perfect, but it is still a decent system. If Xbox pushes these 'features' I will refuse to buy one and a lot of other people will too.

If Microsoft truly want people to buy new games, they shouldn't limit the game's ability to handle second hand games. Instead they need sell them at a reasonable price! I rent a game before I buy it to see if it is worth the money. If I cannot do this, I won't buy the game. If it is really good and appears to have a high 'replay value', I might buy it new. However, I usually buy games second hand because $60 is outrageous and $20-$30 is much more reasonable. Selling games for download is also a nice choice, but many of those cost the same (or close to it) as a retail hard-copy. Microsoft needs to rethink their plans and talk with users to see what they will agree with... not listen high-level board members that think they have a working strategy, but do not understand what users want.