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Comment Re:Wikipedia Is Rotten (Score 1) 235

Why? Who cares if webcomic X gets its own 2 line wikipedia page? It doesn't cost anything (except a trivial amount of disk space) and no one has to look at it if they don't want to. The idea of wikipedia being a rival to Britannica et al should be left behind: while editing is open to all no one can treat it as definitive and frankly I doubt anyone does. Wikipedia is "good enough". It's 95% there, but that extra 5% will take a hell of a lot of effort and come at a cost that many would find unnacceptable. Just accept that it is what it is and enjoy it, stop striving for something unobtainable and frankly undesirable.

Comment Re:Half seems like a lot (Score 1) 169

As someone with some experience in retail I can tell you that 50% margin would be considered extremely good for an electronic item at final retail. Normally the high street retailer will make 10-20% on these things and the internet discounters will be pushing 5%. There is just so much competition out there and people are very sensitive to price for electronics, however amazon has no competitors for the kindle, so they can pretty much charge what they want. (For comparison, clothing will normally make 50-80%, books 35%, though it depends greatly on the industry and niche)

Comment Re:USO sounds like a really great plan (Score 1) 113

So, to continue this shocking analogy, you would prefer to have to ring round 5 gritting companies beforehand to get the best price, keeping an eye on the weather all the time just to make sure you don't forget? And there's a fair chance your neighbours will have used a different company, meaning several journeys by several trucks (which is clearly not more efficient) not forgetting that the companies will necessarily being buying in smaller quantities therefore getting a worse price. Not to mention the people who choose not to pay and get the benefit of other people paying for them, leading to a tragedy of the commons. No, sometimes competition is good, in some cases it is clearly ludicrous.

If you've learnt one thing from the events of the last 12 months in the economy it should be that there is no guiding hand; free markets are not by default the most efficient solution. Like natural selection the market goes to local maxima in the landscape rather than the best solution. Sometimes the local maxima IS the best solution, but oftimes it's not.

Comment Re:I don't know about Skype's quality of service (Score 3, Informative) 79

Skype for business is truly awful. There is no support , their software locks users out of their accounts randomly along with their credit, it also blocks them from the business account randomly, oh and did I mention there is no way to contact skype?

I can deal with the lack of support and dropped calls in their free version, but as soon as I start paying them money I expect to at least have some level of contact with the company and people who are paying a considerable amount (and there are people spending thousands complaining in their forum) will expect personal contact. If they ever want to turn a profit I suggest they get this part of their business sorted or they are boned.

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