Comment Re:Customers may benefit... maybe (Score 1) 455
Walmart is forgetting that Visa is a private business, and can choose not to provide services to Walmart.
Walmart is forgetting that Visa is a private business, and can choose not to provide services to Walmart.
And what Walmart is saying is that the extra costs from Visa were maintained through market collusion between competitors (which is illegal in the US). They were forced to artificially inflate their prices to their customers which resulted in reduced sales and direct damage to Walmart.
For one, I don't think that Walmart's margins are so thin that they can't afford to absorb a transaction fee for using Visa... I'll admit that Visa is much more expensive than direct debit (at least in this country... Visa is about 20x higher transaction fee than Interac), but it's still only about 1% transaction fee. If Walmart's margins are *that* thin on their product, they better pray that this thing in Crimea doesn't turn to a war because they'll go bankrupt with the increase in fuel costs it'll cause.
And for two, if they don't like paying the transaction fee, then don't. Costco seems to be doing quite well for themselves, and the only credit card they take is Amex, and that's only because Costco issues its own credit card which is backed by Amex. Walmart chooses to accept Visa and Mastercard. If they don't like the terms, then don't accept it.
Walmart? The retail chain that pays its employees such a low wage that they can't even afford to shop at Walmart, and deliberately cuts back on their employees' hours to avoid having to pay benefits? *this* is the company you hold up as the model of how to run a business?
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2...
If Walmart is a paragon, what the hell does that make Costco?
Statistics are wonderful, but yours are most likely wrong. A better estimate of how many people born before computers and software existed have died would be 93%. I am using http://www.prb.org/Publication... as my main reference.
Patents, in theory, are actually a reasonably good idea.... the problem is, you need to find an adequate balance between rewarding innovation, and allowing others to benefit from them as well. That latter bit is the reason they expire. The former bit is because it can be very expensive to come up with and implement a new idea. Development costs, and all.
In practice it doesn't always work that way, but I wouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater. We should figure out how to prevent abuse, not get rid of the system entirely.
Similarly, btw, copyrights do actually serve a purpose. As wonderful a world as it would be that artists and content creators could be free to create without worrying about where their next meal comes from, they do still need to eat. Copyright exists so that people can be rewarded for creating works. It's ridiculous that it lasts long enough that your grandchildren can still profit from it, but I wouldn't toss it completely out the window, either.
Of course they voted it down, their energy policy is good marketing for their target audience. The bottom line is still the reason for the policy.
Sustainability is still a good thing to be going for... regardless of whether they're doing it for marketing reasons, or because they believe that 50 years from now there won't be any more coal fired power plants, doesn't really matter. Investing in renewable energy sources now is the smart thing to do regardless of whether you take an optimistic or pessimistic view of why they're doing it.
Bullshit. I had helped build a community run Wireless internet system back 10 years ago, we had 10mbps to each home which is more than enough to broadcast a single HD stream and a couple of SD streams at the same time.
Really? Because 1080p h.264 *can* be that low if you compress the hell out of it, but we've found at the company I work for that anything less than about 4.5-5mbit for the video (and another 1mbit for the audio) is basically unwatchable on a big screen TV, due to compression artifacts. We actually encode HD at a higher bit rate than that for our own IPTV offering, and SD comes in about 4.5mbit with the audio included.
And that's using h.264, which didn't exist 10 years ago. You were able to get an HD stream + a couple of SD streams on a 10mbit connection? Must've looked like shit....
The landscape has changed.
Good point. When I switched to a powered antenna here in Ottawa, Canada, I was able to pick up several channels I couldn't get without it. Even with my relatively inexpensive indoor antenna (a Terk HDTVa, which Google says can be had for about $60 in the US), I get 14 channels, including two from the Watertown, NY broadcast station (PBS and Fox), from a 16th floor apartment with a southwest view. If I turn the in-line amplifier off, I only get 6 channels, all of them local. Oddly, one of those 6 channels, I don't get when the amplifier is on, so I actually have to turn the amplifier off when I want to watch that channel... o.O
If I had a different fronting, or if there was a building south of mine that I could bounce the signal off, I could actually get the signals from another transmitter north of the city, and would actually be getting about 22 channels (though 5 of them would be in French).
So, I can get Direct TV or Dish with TW broadband, or I can get TW cable and broadband. That's it. I have decided to go Roku and TW broadband only. That is what I get, and that is what I watch. Olympics not available? Then I don't give a shit. But for those few who do, no choice but to do what the majority of Game of Thrones watchers do.
You realize, you could ask your neighbour to use a splitter on his antenna and feed you from the same antenna? That's what people used to do in the days before cable. In fact, that was the original cable... CATV = Community Antenna TV.
You do realize that Shrub issued more executive orders in his first term than Obama has in his first 6 years? And that combined, they don't hold a candle to Reagan?
most of the people who would boycott are probably no script/adblock anyway, so there's no lost impressions there.
They give you the option to turn off ads when you've posted enough upmodded comments anyway.... the theory, I'm assuming, is that if you're actually contributing you're helping to drive people to the site, so they actually make money off your posts.
If *those* people stop posting/contributing, then they will notice it. At least, they will, if there's any logic at all to having the option to turn off ads....
Very, but sometimes you can't let the UID fool you. This is actually my 4th account... I forgot the password for my first one a *long* time ago after the first time I quit using Slashdot (which I think was over a site redesign, actually, and wouldn't use it any more anyway because it was my real name at the time), and stopped using the other two because I didn't like the usernames -- one started getting used, in another context, by a kink porn company in Seattle, and the other is too similar to another user on the site. Yes, this one's a high UID, but I've been coming here off and on for 14 years now.
I think we both know that sometimes you see very insightful comments from nooblets, and sometimes very inciteful comments from old-timers.... the UID isn't *really* a very good indication of the quality of the content.
It's pretty awful. But it seems to be happening only part of the time... my browser clears cookies/etc. on close, and it only gives me the beta about half the time.
I get what they're trying to do, but it's really quite terrible for a threaded comment system.
With your bare hands?!?
