Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 394 Editor's Choice: 41
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@anonymous
[Read the article: Has NBC gone mad?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"What other markets exist where the distributor controls the pricing to this extent?"
Oil. Discount stores (as mentioned by another poster).
Sears did it for years, but they weren't close enough to the bottom of the market for it to be a real problem. But was there ever a succesful direct competitor to Sears Roebuck? Nope. Everyone entered the market above them or below them, because going head to head was suicide. When you can buy entire production runs of products and set the world market for Levi's (and Sears is the reason that Levi's is gasping it's last breaths) there is no possibility for anyone to take you on directly. It was only when Wal-Mart and Target started coming at them from below that they began to suffer from the effects of competition.
Really it amounts to a workaround to the anti-monopoly policies. Massive vertical integration after the point of production instead of before. Enormous buying power makes everything a commodity so the point of production becomes irrelevant. Same result as a true monoploy but within the letter of the law.
Wal-Mart is becoming a problem from a competition standpoint, but consumers want them to do what they do so the government won't step in. And Apple has iTunes, an interface so good and so transparent that people won't even consider alternatives - Microsoft has an excellent interface for their product, but can't get traction because of iPods and general consumer bias. The synergy between iPod and iTunes is incredible.
The solution, unfortunately, has to come from Congress. An ammendment to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act that requires a single DRM standard that would allow content from any provider to be played on any device would open up the market from one end immediately, and create a playing field where intermediaries could compete with Apple. Which makes me wonder, how much of Apple's marketing budget goes to lobbyists?
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@ Phoenix Woman
[Read the article: Bill Richardson on greening SUVs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Actually the unchanging, immutable date for the first production fusion reactor going online was 2040 right up until the Clinton administration. Budgets were rasied and lowered based on progress against that schedule. Now it's more like 2050 or 2060, thanks to huge budget cuts initiated by Richardson and implemented by the G8.
The problem is not so much technical as it is economic. If we launched a space program like initiative to provide fusion power we'd probably have it in 10 years. The fact that Ethiopia and Zimbabwe having access to abundant cheap, clean power so they could build their own manufacturing facilities will turn the world economy on it's head is the real issue here, and one that we are unwilling or unable to deal with.
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Phoenix Woman Again
[Read the article: Bill Richardson on greening SUVs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Try talking to a Venezuelan expatriate who has lost everything before singing the praises of Hugo Chavez. Using rhetoric and outright lies - do you really believe he taught all the "indigenous peoples" (all of them!) to read in 2 years even though they had never been exposed to written language before? - to disguise a brutal military dictatorship complete with travel restrictions, property confiscation, and elections at gunpoint can only fool those who want to be fooled.
Large SUV's, Suburbans, Expeditions, etc..., are in fact converted pickup trucks and are very cheap to build. The smaller ones are converted cars or unique platforms that represent no savings in manufacturing costs but do represent the market's desire for vehicles that are very ineffecient.
Earth bound solar power will never be more than a supplement, filling in the gaps to run accessories and luxuries while more robust sources are used to do the heavy lifting. Space based solar power has potential, but we aren't all that interested in space anymore, are we?
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Give credit where credit is due
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Michigan chose a tougher opponent than you thought. Admit it, you saw the name Appalachian State, maybe heard all the jokes about Caitlan Upton, and jumped to a conclusion.
You don't follow college football, so you likely didn't know that the Mountaineers are one of the best Division-Formerly-Known-As-1AA schools in history. Or that this year's Michigan team was highly over rated coming into the season. You saw Big School vs Little School and made an assumption.
Modesty forbids me using my own beloved Miami Hurricanes - a relatively small school that was on the verge of eliminating it's football program entirely just 2 years before they won their first National Championship, which kicked off 25 years of more or less consistent Division 1A dominance - as an example of how wrong these kinds of assumptions can be. Well, I guess I'm not all that modest :)
I will tell you that this is going to become more common, not less. As school budgets are slashed around the country, there are going to be more and more talented atheletes who play their first ball when they get to college. And a lot of them are going to turn out to be damn good. Good enough for David to take out Goliath. We may not see an upset of these epic proportions again, but there are going to be some really good games and unlikely outcomes.
It's just a shame that you won't see any of them.
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To the creative accountant
[Read the article: Has NBC gone mad?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Great post! You get a red star from me :)
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Didn't take it seriously?
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If that's so, and I don't think it is, then Michigan didn't just have a bad game, they have a bad program.
I can see not taking it seriously before kickoff, it shows the coaches are slacking off but it happens. But a light should have gone off after they didn't get that 3 and out. And they should have started dominating after A.S. got that first score.
The only reasonable explanation why they didn't, or didn't at least dominate the second half, was that they couldn't. Appalachian State was too good.
I can understand you wanting to think it was that they were overlooking a supposedly lesser opponent. I'd want to think that too, because this could be a very long year for you if that wasn't the case. But the fact is that Michigan didn't lose that game, Appalachian State won it.