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Anonymous
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That Kylepost was incindiary brilliance.
PeeB's Contract's on the ropes . . .
:face:
PeeB's Contract's on the ropes . . .
:face:
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dshpipes
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Sheeeeeeeesh. Are we all saying the same thing over and over and over and over again? It seems that we are.
Me & Peeb: The phone costs $700 at full retail unless you sign a contract which subsidizes the price, thereby allowing someone to pay significantly less for it. Look it up. The facts support this.
Kyle & Yak: The phone doesn't cost $700 because people aren't used to paying that and in our opinion the market wouldn't bare it.
Am I summarizing correctly? This is what I'm hearing.
A new Mercedes does not cost $3,000 because that's what you pay at signing and it is definitely worth less than you agreed to pay for it over however long by the time you pay it off or sell it. It's worth less than that the moment you drive it off the lot.
Just about everything loses value over time. A car, a coffee mug, books, speakers, computers, beds, briefcases, chairs, bikes, furniture, televisions, tools, toys, airplanes, boats, watches... I mean everything. Why, in the case of cell phones, does their depreciation mean that the phone doesn't cost $700 now?
Kyle, do you have anything factual to back you up? Unless I missed it, I've heard only conclusions based upon casual observation which have been influenced by personal opinion. No facts. Help me out here, bud. Currently I feel like we're all standing outside, Peeb and I are pointing at the sky in the middle of the day and saying, "See? The sky is blue," and we're hearing you say(without glancing up), "Based on my knowledge of the world and a sunset I saw once, I can tell you that you are wrong. The sky is a brilliant orange/red."
Me & Peeb: The phone costs $700 at full retail unless you sign a contract which subsidizes the price, thereby allowing someone to pay significantly less for it. Look it up. The facts support this.
Kyle & Yak: The phone doesn't cost $700 because people aren't used to paying that and in our opinion the market wouldn't bare it.
Am I summarizing correctly? This is what I'm hearing.
A new Mercedes does not cost $3,000 because that's what you pay at signing and it is definitely worth less than you agreed to pay for it over however long by the time you pay it off or sell it. It's worth less than that the moment you drive it off the lot.
Just about everything loses value over time. A car, a coffee mug, books, speakers, computers, beds, briefcases, chairs, bikes, furniture, televisions, tools, toys, airplanes, boats, watches... I mean everything. Why, in the case of cell phones, does their depreciation mean that the phone doesn't cost $700 now?
Kyle, do you have anything factual to back you up? Unless I missed it, I've heard only conclusions based upon casual observation which have been influenced by personal opinion. No facts. Help me out here, bud. Currently I feel like we're all standing outside, Peeb and I are pointing at the sky in the middle of the day and saying, "See? The sky is blue," and we're hearing you say(without glancing up), "Based on my knowledge of the world and a sunset I saw once, I can tell you that you are wrong. The sky is a brilliant orange/red."
Kyle Weiss
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Can't a man troll in peace? Geez! :lol: I honestly think the whole thing is stupidly funny, outlining why I like hanging out with you guys digitally.
Weirdly, I've noticed when someone cites just facts, those following along (or trying to) almost immediately want something else, like what the speaker/writer personally thinks. When a presenter only says what they think, those reading/listening suddenly want specific facts. In an ideal world, I guess we'd all have precise fifty-fifty content each and every time. Ye fickle apes. :lol:
Though I have to say, "facts" are just someone's observations that happen to get written down, and the more nods it gets, the more "fact" it is. Yet referencing silly links on the Internet is all the "fact" most people need, aliens, cell phone prices in Thailand, or news. You know, technically, the sky really isn't blue at all, nor is the sunset you see brilliant reds, purples or yellows. Perception is a funny thing.
The only facts I know and trust are that which I lay eyes and mind upon. This stems from people not being able to prove anything, as with the whole "facts" thing a few sentences earlier. People do a good job convincing other people about things, but it still doesn't make it real, it just means people are okay with getting along where needed. It's a survival tool, after all. We just get stuff, or we don't.
If you must know, I come from a decade-plus background working with computers, peripherals, software and networking. Technology has a life span, designed obsolescence, cost, sale and depreciation that's unlike anything, service or goods, that's come before it. It's moving economically and design-wise faster than the economy it lives in, and even conventional thinking and business, can keep up with...until the last five or ten years. That's why a $700 cell phone isn't a $700 cell phone, and the contract takes advantage of that. Go back and re-read the car/cell phone comparison, one which is a "new era" invention/modern tool, the other has been around (and developed) for over 100 years in its own unique way.
I don't generally think based solely on information picked up from who-knows-where (call me skeptical), but I do believe I'm intelligent enough to make fantastically accurate educated guesses to how things work. If it helps, feel comfortable in the fact you're reading all this dreck from a bona-fide high school dropout, former street kid, current nut-job or whatever facilitates an easy way to get back to normalcy. I'm a permanent resident where most are tourists.
Someone's gotta be here, I suppose.
Meh, it's all just fun. I mean, this is a serious poise and weird brain-training (I suppose) with no expected outcome. None of this matters, it's just the Internet. Join the circus or watch from the stands, but we're all clowns here, Brothers.
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Weirdly, I've noticed when someone cites just facts, those following along (or trying to) almost immediately want something else, like what the speaker/writer personally thinks. When a presenter only says what they think, those reading/listening suddenly want specific facts. In an ideal world, I guess we'd all have precise fifty-fifty content each and every time. Ye fickle apes. :lol:
Though I have to say, "facts" are just someone's observations that happen to get written down, and the more nods it gets, the more "fact" it is. Yet referencing silly links on the Internet is all the "fact" most people need, aliens, cell phone prices in Thailand, or news. You know, technically, the sky really isn't blue at all, nor is the sunset you see brilliant reds, purples or yellows. Perception is a funny thing.
The only facts I know and trust are that which I lay eyes and mind upon. This stems from people not being able to prove anything, as with the whole "facts" thing a few sentences earlier. People do a good job convincing other people about things, but it still doesn't make it real, it just means people are okay with getting along where needed. It's a survival tool, after all. We just get stuff, or we don't.
If you must know, I come from a decade-plus background working with computers, peripherals, software and networking. Technology has a life span, designed obsolescence, cost, sale and depreciation that's unlike anything, service or goods, that's come before it. It's moving economically and design-wise faster than the economy it lives in, and even conventional thinking and business, can keep up with...until the last five or ten years. That's why a $700 cell phone isn't a $700 cell phone, and the contract takes advantage of that. Go back and re-read the car/cell phone comparison, one which is a "new era" invention/modern tool, the other has been around (and developed) for over 100 years in its own unique way.
I don't generally think based solely on information picked up from who-knows-where (call me skeptical), but I do believe I'm intelligent enough to make fantastically accurate educated guesses to how things work. If it helps, feel comfortable in the fact you're reading all this dreck from a bona-fide high school dropout, former street kid, current nut-job or whatever facilitates an easy way to get back to normalcy. I'm a permanent resident where most are tourists.
Someone's gotta be here, I suppose.Meh, it's all just fun. I mean, this is a serious poise and weird brain-training (I suppose) with no expected outcome. None of this matters, it's just the Internet. Join the circus or watch from the stands, but we're all clowns here, Brothers.
8)
A
Anonymous
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And re-think it while you're at it. The big car companies made tons of money. And the "aftermarket" that sprung up about 15 minutes later made tons of money. There was something in it for everybody who had something to offer that somebody else wanted. Cars were (and are) an economic artesian well.
Hell, Alfred Dunhill started as a source of expensive "motoring" peripherals -- "windproof" pipes (so that Hizzoner could smoke while he tooled along at 15 m.p.h.) being one of them.
Compare that with Microsoft. Which, about the time everybody and his brother was coming out with some great new app. that ran on one, switched its source code (on which it had a legally-enforceable monopoly), sinking hundreds of startups. And blessing the world with the legendary quality of Microsoftware ever since.
It's EXACTLY comparable to the concept of Colt having (conjecturally) had a patent monopoly on .45 cal. revolver cartridges (or .45 ACPs) and to today's desktop printers legally requiring that only their own ridiculously gouging-level overpriced toner cartridges be used in them. And the "Hey -- you signed the CONTRACT" rationalisation holds just about as much water. When a printer or a telephone gets turned into an economic ****y trap by the fine print in the "sales agreement," there is a fundamental violation of the set of reasonable expectations that have grown up among actual people around gizmos like that in general. It's an attempt to impose ironclad corporate ownership of peoples' fundamental sense of the perquisites of ownership, evolved over centuries, and re-shape that along lines calculated to generate maximum possible revenue, using the governmental gun to do it. (Replacing Common Law limits and expectations -- most certainly those formerly unenforceable as "Uncionscienceable Contracts" -- with those of Admiralty Law/the Uniform Commercial Code that every Federal power grabbing usurpation is based on).
"Hey Buddy -- that's not YOUR cell phone. We don't care whether you bought it or not. That's OUR cell phone that you're only renting from us. Read the fine print, Serf. Same way as you're only renting that house & yard you think you "own" (how quaint !) from us. Don't think so ? Miss a couple tax payments on it and we come and take it back."
Welcome to 1984 + 29. And don't be wondering how we got here when you're looking at one example of it in action and rooting for the bad guys who are re-defining your role in the drama of life by re-writing the script.
:face:
POPULIST AGITATOR
Kyle Weiss
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You're right, Yak, the Colt example is much more direct, but the car/sales fiction I spliced together as an example for cell phone sales having more similar layers to auto sales that could be understood (at least I thought :lol: ) by others.
Software is the same way, the only person that owns the software are the software developers and companies who employ them. So many people gloss over the "EULA" or stickers that say, "If you install this software, you're subject to ____________ ." If the company ever demanded their software back (which they never would...but if...) you are legally responsible to return their property. If you don't, and get caught with it, you're in possession of stolen goods.
The main point with the car/cell I dramatized was two consumer goods with two similar avenues, either one could be templated over one another with little change. There's a government-controlled infrastructure that's being used, companies in control of the sales, distribution, prices and repairs, it being an "every-day item," both items being almost instant revolutionary life-changers within a short period of time, and both usually requiring some kind of contract to purchase, and a different process to purchase them outright.
The main difference is (US) cars were made in a time when things were made here, and have taken 100+ years to develop into what they are today, as are the roads and even the way we buy them. If cars were suddenly sold like cell phones, and cell phones like cars, there'd be instant collapse: and people know that. Economies are like religions and governments, they all take "control" (for better or worse) over time, because something that big can't change overnight, so it evolves into its own beast. The cell phone craze, even above and beyond Mickeysoft Inc, has the power to do quite a bit, and the carrot on the stick is the newer, bigger, faster thing (whatever that is). It changes so fast and so frequently people are dazzled by it, as if some legitimate inventor is actually making the world better...but all he's doing is selling useless gimmick. People don't care, they just want what others want, to keep up with each other, and pay as little as possible. They don't have time for other silly things.
The car/cell scenario was a 45 minute as-I-type half-baked comparison, I put a disclaimer above it for a reason. It was a blast to write though, I love doing things like that. It's fun. (...and it wasn't meant to be incendiary, but I can see how it was cheeky...I was just toying with words...)
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Software is the same way, the only person that owns the software are the software developers and companies who employ them. So many people gloss over the "EULA" or stickers that say, "If you install this software, you're subject to ____________ ." If the company ever demanded their software back (which they never would...but if...) you are legally responsible to return their property. If you don't, and get caught with it, you're in possession of stolen goods.
The main point with the car/cell I dramatized was two consumer goods with two similar avenues, either one could be templated over one another with little change. There's a government-controlled infrastructure that's being used, companies in control of the sales, distribution, prices and repairs, it being an "every-day item," both items being almost instant revolutionary life-changers within a short period of time, and both usually requiring some kind of contract to purchase, and a different process to purchase them outright.
The main difference is (US) cars were made in a time when things were made here, and have taken 100+ years to develop into what they are today, as are the roads and even the way we buy them. If cars were suddenly sold like cell phones, and cell phones like cars, there'd be instant collapse: and people know that. Economies are like religions and governments, they all take "control" (for better or worse) over time, because something that big can't change overnight, so it evolves into its own beast. The cell phone craze, even above and beyond Mickeysoft Inc, has the power to do quite a bit, and the carrot on the stick is the newer, bigger, faster thing (whatever that is). It changes so fast and so frequently people are dazzled by it, as if some legitimate inventor is actually making the world better...but all he's doing is selling useless gimmick. People don't care, they just want what others want, to keep up with each other, and pay as little as possible. They don't have time for other silly things.
The car/cell scenario was a 45 minute as-I-type half-baked comparison, I put a disclaimer above it for a reason. It was a blast to write though, I love doing things like that. It's fun. (...and it wasn't meant to be incendiary, but I can see how it was cheeky...I was just toying with words...)
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Pricing strategy is an interesting thing, and consumers should probe for the deal that confers on them the best cost/benefit. The best deal is seldom the first one offered. As I mentioned somewhere above, I got my iPhone4 for free and psid for the contract. My missus scoffed, because she bought the new iPhone, the one with the female voice that will tell you where nearby restaurants are. At the time we bought, the pr campaign was using the notion that the newest iPhone was the better buy because of the "new technology." Well, new and amazing or not, we haven't used her restaurant hunting software at all. Don't expect to, either. Consumers need to keep their wits about them, and sellers, when pushed, will generally offer a sweeter deal than lose a sale, even though their instinct is to get you drunk (or at least confused) and try to have their way with you.
Kyle Weiss
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Costco makes their money on memberships, after all.
Kyle Weiss
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Fun was the end goal. At least for me. :lol: Swaying people is superfluous, but it's a serious thing these days with some. Not-the-destination-but-the-journey, etc (people miss that a lot...sad). Hanging out and talkin' with BoB-minds is most excellent served up any style.
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