No company should be prevented from selling their products directly to the public. Land of the free indeed.
So, you are starting out as a small manufacturer. You've got a product you think people would like, but you don't have the money to build a network of your own retail outlets. So you shop around for a general retailer willing to put your stuff up on a shelf.
The minute your product gains any market share, part of that agreement will be that you don't compete with the retailer within a certain geographical area. And when you start moving large volumes of product through a retailer, your cost to get to the equivalent market goes up. So its a barrier to entry.
That's why many manufacturers' outlet stores are way out in the sticks. No existing retailers cover that area, so outlet malls spring up.
If Tesla can do it why can't other car companies?
Because dealer franchise agreements give individual dealers a defined geographical area in which they are the only sales outlet for that particular model. And that contract language is difficult for manufacturers to break*. Tesla had no such agreements in place.
*Not just manufacturers. We had a road realignment project here in Seattle that was stalled for years by the existence of a Buick (I think) dealership smack in the middle of where they needed to build the new road. Moving it even a few miles would have overlapped another dealership's territory and the value of the franchise was such that it was a show-stopper for the city for quite a while.
Let's hope it is truly anonymous
Some interesting data could still be collected. If the same phone repeatedly appears near the scene of a crime, one could deduce that crimes will occur in the future in its proximity.
From TFA:
Their analysis shows that some mobile phone data is more important than others. For example, the data relating to whether or not the phone owner was at home, was particularly strongly correlated with crime patterns.
Not so anonymous, IMO.
Good luck with digital TV.
Where I live, rabbit ears work OK. Rooftop UHF antenna works great, which is my primary TV source anyway.
Intentionally used.
It happens when someone in management or preliminary design fucks up in the early conceptual stage. So fear and panic are used to keep everyone's head down instead of looking around, asking who made these shitty design decisions.
"Sheep grow heavy coat. Bear put on much weight. White man split much firewood."
More corporate vice presidents to feed. Think of the children!
Boeing hasn't built anything.
I've done even less. I'm kicking myself just thinking about how much I could have asked for.
And over unfriendly territory as well.
Ireland wants to charge its businesses 10%. Fine. Let them. A business in Dublin pays the Irish government 10% on all the profits it makes from revenue received from customers who shop there. Whether they are Irish, Canadian, American, French, whatever.
So if an American buys their products, they pay that 10%. To the Irish government. And they don't pay diddly to the USA. If our Congress doesn't like that, they can take it up with the US citizens who travelled overseas and spent their money where the government take is less. Or they can just keep them the hell out of Ireland. Good luck with that. The last people who built a wall tore it back down in 1989 (Sorry, the second to the last. I forgot Israel).
In my day, we called them codpieces.
Now get off my lawn, peasant!
Your image has no privacy when in a public place.
So they have no problem with the camera I've got set up on the street at the J Edgar Hoover building parking garage entrance?
Battery operated TV set here.
Right now, Bono must be feeling about as bad as Gary Powers did back in 1960.
Happiness is twin floppies.
