Samsung, Toshiba, Others Accused of LCD Price-Fixing 269
GovTechGuy writes "Toshiba, Samsung, Sharp, LG and other major technology companies allegedly colluded to fix the prices of LCD screens used in televisions and computers, according to an antitrust suit filed Friday by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. The complaint alleges that top-level executives at those firms attended secret meetings on a monthly or quarterly basis where they agreed upon minimum prices, price targets, increases and rates to be charged to specific computer manufacturers. The suit also accuses the companies of exchanging product information, agreeing to output levels and keeping prices artificially high by avoiding competition. Cuomo is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and punitive charges for the alleged overcharging of state institutions."
We will see... (Score:5, Interesting)
We will see what comes out in court, although I'm holding back judgement until I see the evidence. If they are doing what the complaint alleges, then yes, fine them enough to discourage them (and others) in the future, ie: heavily. Personally I'm glad to see a bit of consumer protection going on for a change. The FTC has become pretty much useless over the last few decades.
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I hope they get around to hard drive price fixing too. It's been going on for 10 years now.
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Since the price of HD keeps falling like rock, I doubt it.
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Samsung - I do not think it means what you think it means.
Re:We will see... (Score:5, Insightful)
We will see what comes out in court, although I'm holding back judgement until I see the evidence. If they are doing what the complaint alleges, then yes, fine them enough to discourage them (and others) in the future, ie: heavily. Personally I'm glad to see a bit of consumer protection going on for a change. The FTC has become pretty much useless over the last few decades.
Fine them?
This is the problem.
There is no punishment.
JAIL the ones responsible - the CXOs and board members.
FORCE the company to sell their products at government-determined fair prices or FORBID them from doing business in the US.
Problem fucking SOLVED.
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Exactly. They conspired against the free market. You know what we used to do to the people that did that? Look back at McCarthy. Your ass would be blacklisted and you could no longer play with others that followed the rules. They would also spare no expense at throwing the legal system at you (regardless of the legality of their arguments).
Weather or not I agree with what happened back then it is plain to see just how different the American public feels about protecting their Free Market these days.
Re:We will see... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you could go after people working for a company personally then nobody would work for a company
Just like if you could go after a contractor directly, nobody would be a contractor? Oh wait, you can, and there are. I'm pretty much on the far right politically, when it comes to economics. But I still don't necessarily support the idea of the corporate shield. Capitalism and corporatism are two separate concepts, and one can support one without the other.
Besides, the buck should stop with those who make the decisions, not those who are forced to carry them out. Removing the corporate shield wouldn't make working for a company any more dangerous - just running one. And I think we've seen enough examples lately to know that their just plain isn't sufficient accountability at that level of corporate management - the corporate shield is being abused.
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No, they can pass on that cost and people will use other parts.
Re:Not enough (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they can pass on that cost and people will use other parts.
Before we talk about the pros and cons of various forms of sanction against these companies, I have a simple question.
These multiple companies are being accused of colluding. That's a word for a specific type of conspiracy. Since this involves those companies conspiring together, does that mean we immediately scoff at the notion, dismiss it out-of-hand without examination of evidence, and accuse anyone who supports the notion of being a tin-foil hat-wearing nutter?
I just want a little consistency. That's how we treat anyone who suggests that people within government would conspire in some way when both money and power is involved. Why don't we act the same way when anyone suggests that people within corporations would conspire in some way when only money is involved?
Oh, right, because you can choose not to do business with particular corporations so you feel little to no need to bury your heads in the sand when they conspire. It's not so easy to escape the malfeasance of your own government, so you feel a desperate need to say that it isn't and could never be so.
Re:Not enough (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>Punish price-fixing by price-fixing, at least for a period.
(1) That's unconstitutional. The New York Constitution does not grant such a power as "price fixing".
(2) There's no need for such extremes. When the record companies were caught price-fixing CDs (thereby forming an illegal cartel), they were ordered by the courts to refund ~$25 to all their customers, so that erased any illicit profits they had earned.
(3) And then the free market was left to its own devices, and the cost of CDs plummeted from $13 to $9 within a year, since the cartel was no longer allowed to operate. The same will happen to LCDs too, after the price-fixing cartel is broken-up.
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They can put a ceiling on the price.
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Well the suit alleges that the these shortages were not real but rather part of the "story".
However, how are they going to prove that any of this took place when these companies are all foreign corporations, and the persons involved were almost surely overseas. (They would have to be extra dumb ti include their US branch personnel in such meetings).
I don't think NY has the clout to demand documents from Taiwan or Korea.
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Historically, those issue are dealt with be allowing the companies go back to the court and show them they need to raise the price based on things not within their control.
it would probably be heavy handed in this issue. Fine them, then have a substantial larger fine over their head if the court finds them to be colluding at a latter date... plus give me 2 50" LED TVs.
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>>>They can put a ceiling on the price.
Which creates shortages, as not enough items are produced to meet customer demand.
Re:Not enough (Score:5, Informative)
(1) That's unconstitutional. The New York Constitution does not grant such a power as "price fixing".
The court could certainly order that they retain only a certain percentage markup on their products for a given time, to be verified with inspectors double-checking their books.
(2) There's no need for such extremes. When the record companies were caught price-fixing CDs (thereby forming an illegal cartel), they were ordered by the courts to refund ~$25 to all their customers, so that erased any illicit profits they had earned.
You're joking right? That settlement was a COMPLETE FRAUD. Customers who had bought 5-6 dozen music CD's over a decade, at $10+ overcharge per CD, were ripped off with a measly $25 voucher to BUY MORE OVERPRICED PRODUCT. The MafiAA companies pocketed the rest, flipped the bird at the artists they regularly rip off [salon.com], and laughed at how fucking stupid our legal system is.
(3) And then the free market was left to its own devices, and the cost of CDs plummeted from $13 to $9 within a year, since the cartel was no longer allowed to operate. The same will happen to LCDs too, after the price-fixing cartel is broken-up.
Have you seen the prices lately? Pretty fucking uniform - Walmart, Bestbuy, Amazon, all seem to have exactly the same price (or somewhere within 50 cents of each other) on every goddamn CD again, and new releases are hovering steadily around $18. It sounds more like the MafiAA cartel laid low for a few years and went right back to their old tricks again.
Re:Not enough (Score:5, Informative)
>>>That settlement was a COMPLETE FRAUD. Customers who had bought 5-6 dozen music CD's over a decade, at $10+ overcharge per CD
The overcharge was estimated by the court to be $3 per disc. So if you got a $25 refund that covered the overcharge for eight-and-a-half discs. Yes there were some people who bought more than 8.5 discs, but there were also people who bought zero discs (like my mom) and were still eligible for a refund. It all averages out.
AND it punished the companies with a several hundred million dollars loss.
.
>>>were ripped off with a measly $25 voucher to BUY MORE OVERPRICED PRODUCT
False. I got a check, as did my mom, brother, and my two nieces. The checks were converted to CASH. Maybe you should not make false assumptions about something you known nothing about. It was a true refund.
Likewise when Paypal got in trouble, I received a Cash refund of $75 due to a court order. Not a voucher - actual money.
Re:Not enough (Score:4, Interesting)
For what it's worth, yes, they gave out checks. I got one as well. But then I was young, single, and working on my CD collection. I literally spent thousands of dollars in those years on music CDs. I know of many others who spent as much or more, and did not find out about the settlement until it was too late to file. By your own admission, they overcharged 10$ per CD. The RIAA's own figures say they shipped 1 Billion units in the last year covered by the suit, 1999-2000. And the cash settlement was 64 million. So that's 64 million out of ten billion. You make my argument for me.
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>>>Walmart, Bestbuy, Amazon, all seem to have exactly the same price (or somewhere within 50 cents of each other)
Naturally. They are in competition with one another and watch prices. Of course they will all be in the same ballpark. They want to undercut each other, but still high enough to keep a profit.
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>>>new releases are hovering steadily around $18.
Well sure. New releases are always higher due to demand, but after awhile they drop to around $9.... which is 3 dollars less than the p
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So, if I buy three or four LCDs, I'll be under budget enough to buy a $39 bluray disk? Awesome!
Re:Not enough (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>(2) There's no need for such extremes. When the record companies were caught price-fixing CDs (thereby forming an illegal cartel), they were ordered by the courts to refund ~$25 to all their customers, so that erased any illicit profits they had earned.
If you really believe they came anywhere NEAR paying out what they gained by even just the five years of price fixing that they got caught for, you're delusional. The industry shipped over one billion units in the year 2000. Their settlement of 64 million cash to consumers and 75 million in CD's (at a likely actual cost of a few percent of the 75 million) distributed to non-profit organizations was nowhere near the billions they profited.
And just because when they came up with a lower price fix eventually thereafter is hardly evidence of the 'free market left to it's own devices' adjusting correctly. You'd have to be a total tool to believe these things.
The bottom line is that at least two of these companies (Samsung and Toshiba) were directly involved and found guilty of memory price fixing at least once in recent times by multiple courts, and neither the governmental remedies nor the supposed hand of the free market impacted them enough to stop them from doing it again with LCDs. Nothing will stop them and millions of other companies from continuing to screw the consumer in the future. Your premise fails in both theory and application.
Re:Not enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's say they can boost profits by 30% by colluding, but a conviction is severe enough to hurt profits 10% compared to not colluding. Now let's also say that part of the conviction penalty involves paying non-colluding competitors, so those competitors profit an extra 5% per guilty company. Given a high enough chance of conviction and a 3-company market, it would on average be more profitable if your company competes, the others collude, and they get convicted (so your company boosts profits by 10%). As long as companies act selfishly, they all want to be the odd man out, so they never agree to collude.
Of course, price fixing doesn't happen without all parties cooperating- my example just illustrates how you can use the prisoner's dilemma [wikipedia.org] against companies so the optimal solution (all colluding) never happens.
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I think this is a good approach, personally. A much more significant and lasting punishment for the crime.
Question is, how long to punish? I think it would only be fair to force them to sell at a lowered price for the same duration they sold at jacked up prices. If they go out of business, tough shit. Should have thought about the consequences of the actions.
And yes, everyone who bought an LCD during those dates should either receive a reimbursement equal in % to what they were overcharged, or receive a coupon for that % off a purchase of any new LCD from that company that they buy.
No more light slaps on the back of the hands, corporations need a solid punch in the gut for pulling stunts like this.
There's one thing that needs to take place if you want a truly effective deterrent.
All top-level executives who supported this collusion need to be personally conviced of fraud in a criminal court. I'm guessing that fraud on the scale of multiple millions of dollars would land them some hard time in a maximum-security prison. Fraud is fraud even if the criminal who perpetrated the fraud did not directly receive the money out of which the victims were defrauded (i.e. it went directly to his/her corporat
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What I feel would work is make it a mandantory 2 year sentence at Leavenworth Federal Prison - Low Security the first time around. Give em hard labor and personally fine them. Increase the penalty to 5 years in the medium security section and if they're found guilty a thrid time, life in maximum security with the real dangerous criminals. Furthermore, place them in with the general population instead of the damn country club. Also in regards to the 2nd and 3rd offenses, you punish their families too. They h
Re:Not enough (Score:5, Insightful)
What I feel would work is make it a mandantory 2 year sentence at Leavenworth Federal Prison - Low Security the first time around. Give em hard labor and personally fine them. Increase the penalty to 5 years in the medium security section and if they're found guilty a thrid time, life in maximum security with the real dangerous criminals. Furthermore, place them in with the general population instead of the damn country club. Also in regards to the 2nd and 3rd offenses, you punish their families too.
If you or I committed such crimes personally without a corporation that resulted in the same amount of monetary loss, we would not get such light treatment as a low security prison away from the hardened prison population. Neither should the executives who create these issues.
I cannot rightly support punishing their families. If family members are proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have committed a crime, then by all means prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. Otherwise, advocating the punishing of innocents is much worse than any fraud the execs in question may have perpetrated. In fact it's quite likely that such innocents were as deceived by the perpetrators as anyone else. You should be ashamed for desiring such an outcome, sir. This is not honor or justice. It's a smack in the face to both. You lose the right to represent either honor or justice the moment you want to harm innocents who remain innocent until proven guilty. I cannot overstate how pathological such an urge actually is.
They have to prove nothing. That burden of proof is squarely on the shoulders of the prosecution should an accusation be made. You dishonor and shame yourself for advocating such a witch-hunt. It is beneath you. If it is not, it should be. If you are so easily corrupted by outrage then you are manifestly unfit to deal correctly with injustice, for you represent what you claim to be against.
If that stings a bit, it doesn't sting enough. How do you suppose people like those execs become so amoral and corrupt in the first place? It's because they see injustice like anyone else and eventually they become just like what they hate. Take this as a warning if there is any wisdom within you.
Its always interesting to see these allegations (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Its always interesting to see these allegations (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA, it covers 1996 to 2006, a time when prices were still pretty damn high. I know, I have a $600 20" monitor from that era.
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Unfortunately, it died when the BenQ 15" LCD Monitors were still $550 CAN.
Biggest rip off ever.
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Of course prices were pretty damn high, the LCD displays was still very new then! Not to mention that 4:3 20" LCD monitors still cost almost as much.
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I bought a 21" CRT for $70 (2006).
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Par for the course (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Par for the course (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, monopolies are the goal of capitalism. It's the ideal end-game - to own the entire market. If you can't own it, then you'll either acquire your competition, or collude to ensure that everyone can go home with big fat paycheques and bonuses and lots of cash. And that's the goal of a capitalistic society - to earn as much money as possible.
What threatens a monopoly the most is the young startup who dares to disturb whatever nice arrangement you have making money. Which a monopoly or a collusion would go and prevent by either outright purchasing the new competition, or make it impossible for it to survive, by dumping.
Monopolies are allowed and legal, however, governments tend to institute measures to ensure that monopolies don't abuse their power (leveraging a monopoly in one area to gain it on another, dumping to drive competition out of business, etc).
Re:Par for the course (Score:4, Insightful)
Monopoly profits may be the goal of capitalists, but when they're not colluding (or when there are low enough barriers to entry that it doesn't matter, which may not be the case here, especially with patents involved) other capitalists just stab each other in the back (business-wise) so they can get their share. Eventually, they're just making normal profits, and it's not all that interesting, so they can go off and do other things with their money.
That's the "everyman" take-away, anyway.
Re:Par for the course (Score:5, Funny)
Systems hate it when you anthromorphize them.
Do systems love it when they're not anthromorphized? Can I hurt the feelings of systems by ascribing feelings to them?
Re:Par for the course (Score:5, Informative)
Monopolies aren't legal in the US, unless they first ask permission from the government (an exclusive contract).
This is not true.
Pay attention to what our occasional anti-trust cases are actually about. They're never "X has a monopoly", they're "X has been engaging in anti-competitive behavior", "X has been abusing their monopoly on Y to cheat in market Z", etc.
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"power, automobiles, computers, food, media"
Power - Always has been a local monopoly in America. Usually driven by who owns the power distribution network.
Automobiles - Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Honda, Kia, Hyundai, Volkswagen/BMW, Mercedes, Fiat, Tata, and I'm forgetting a few actual companies. Plenty of competition I think.
Computers - Lenovo, Dell, Gateway, Toshiba, Panasonic, HP, Acer, Apple. Now this is an area where competition seems lacking, right? Who did I miss?
Food
Don't confuse brands with manufacturers. (Score:2, Insightful)
You're confusing what are basically brands with manufacturers.
Many of the automotive companies you listed make cars for one another. That ends up rendering them more as brands, rather than outright manufacturers. Even then, many of them buy their parts from the same parts manufacturers, and only act as mere assemblers most of the time.
The situation is even worse with computers. Like with the automotive companies you listed, all of those computer companies merely assemble computers. They all use components m
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The situation is even worse with computers. Like with the automotive companies you listed, all of those computer companies merely assemble computers. They all use components made by a very small number of manufacturers
The obvious- and most central- example is that of the x86 PC's CPU itself, where the market is basically a duopoly that's just a few not-quite-competitive AMD releases away from being a monopoly.
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actually, it's three way, Intel, AMD and Via.
IIRC there are a few manufacturers making 486 clones (there can't be many patents left on stuff that old can there?) for the embedded market as well.
Still it remains that for high end desktop PCs there is only one choice and for ordinary desktops/laptops there are only two reasonable choices. Via only really have chips in the netbook/nettop range afaict. I do wonder how long AMD will be able to hang on now intel have got their act together, being forced to sell y
Re:Par for the course (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, market forces work so that companies naturally merge to only 3 or 4 main competitors when an industry is mature. When the industry is young, sure, there's lots of smaller competitors. But as the industry matures, the poorer competitors die out, and others merge together, and eventually there's only 3 or 4. At this time, these larger companies are able to take advantage of economies of scale that smaller competitors cannot, and as the industry and technology is mature, new small competitors can't bring any new innovation to the table that outweighs their lack of brand recognition and economies of scale. We saw this in the automotive industry, and many others.
In a healthy market with a mature industry, 3 or 4 main competitors is the most efficient. The catch is, you need a decent government in place which oversees them and makes sure that they don't form a cartel or collude in any way to screw over the customers. Without any government regulation, you'll either end up with a cartel/oligopoly, or a monopoly, and then you don't have a free market at all, since there's no real competition and no choice for the consumers.
Unfortunately, the Rand-worshiping free-market fans almost always forget about the role government has in ensuring the marketplace remains a level playing field. (And those who oppose the free-market Randians want a giant centralized government that basically micromanages everything.)
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I have another idea: how about a law forbidding lawyers from holding public office? I think that would solve many of our problems. The way it is now, most people in Congress are lawyers, the President is a lawyer, and everyone in the Supreme Court is a lawyer.
At the very most, only Congresspeople should be allowed to be lawyers, since they write the laws. The President and SCOTUS Justices should never be lawyers.
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Wait, what? The people who are the ultimate arbiters of law in the country, capable of setting binding precedent, and overturning any other legal or court decision in the country, should not have any formal training in law?!? That should make things interesting...
Actually, I think the situation of Congress being what, 90%+ lawyers, is the one that needs to change. Even if it means Congress gets its own special legal team to draft legislation as passed by Congress.
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Wait, what? The people who are the ultimate arbiters of law in the country, capable of setting binding precedent, and overturning any other legal or court decision in the country, should not have any formal training in law?!? That should make things interesting...
I never said that. I only said they shouldn't be lawyers.
Instead, they should be judges. Who went to school to be judges, not lawyers.
That's the way France does it, as does other Civil Code countries. Judges are not former lawyers; they're speci
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Unfortunately, the Rand-worshiping free-market fans almost always forget about the role government has in ensuring the marketplace remains a level playing field.
The rand-worshipers that I have heard have pointed out the role that government has in enabling and creating monopolies.
Patents, Licenses, Grants, etc.. barriers to entry.. brought to you by Uncle Sam.
Economies of scale isnt a valid argument. Even in mature markets with only 2 or 3 competitors, its not unheard of for a new competitor to enter the market and be successful. If there is enough money to be made, investors will follow, and start-ups can be huge from the outset because of it.
When I was gro
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Randians are full of shit. Standard Oil didn't need patents to build a monopoly. Yes, economies of scale are a valid argument, despite whatever you're smoking. Bigger companies can buy in bigger quantities, and get better discounts. The only way new competitors enter the market is if they have a new innovation that outweighs the economies of scale their entrenched competitors enjoy. In a mature industry, this isn't likely. For instance, if you want to start an oil company to compete with Chevron, Texa
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Yes, economies of scale are a valid argument, despite whatever you're smoking. Bigger companies can buy in bigger quantities, and get better discounts.
Companies can enter the market as a big player. This can be a new startup with a lot of investors, or an existing company entering a new market. If you dont address that point then you are just repeating the refuted argument.
As far as Standard Oil, it was broken up and rightly so. But you are forgetting that Standard Oil's main leverage was railroad discrimination, and the existing railroads had a government protected monopoly. The government created Standard Oil's advantage.
Price-fixing creates opportunity for little guys. (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing is, market forces work so that companies naturally merge to only 3 or 4 main competitors when an industry is mature. ... At this time, these larger companies are able to take advantage of economies of scale that smaller competitors cannot, and as the industry and technology is mature, new small competitors can't bring any new innovation to the table that outweighs their lack of brand recognition and economies of scale.
So far so good...
The catch is, you need a decent government in place which overs
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Unfortunately, the Rand-worshiping free-market fans almost always forget about the role government has in ensuring the marketplace remains a level playing field.
And what of the role of government in allowing these corporations to exist in the first place? Partnerships and companies rarely achieve anything near the size of corporations.
Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Whose ass do you have to sue to get some highres monitors around here?
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If they can't fix the price, they may well have to compete more on actual features...
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Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
No, I didn't and no, it's not. The direct translation is Hail Victory.
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Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Forget price fixing, what about resolution fixi (Score:4, Interesting)
Whose ass do you have to sue to get some highres monitors around here?
Forget it.
The only way that's going to happen is if the pixel count gets magically quadrupled, so you can immediately jump from 1900x1200 on a 24" monitor to 3800x2400.
Any intermediate solutions simply wouldn't work due to issues with scaling existing content. Read: it would look like blurred shit. If you don't want to scale things up in size and keep everything 1:1, then tough luck, because it would require perfect vision and strain the eyes, which would make it inaccessible for the vast majority of people out there (and even then, there are limits). I have a 22" running the bog-standard 1680x1050, and to be honest, sometimes I wouldn't mind having a 24" with the same resolution for extra comfort, after a long day of work...
Scale up: looks like shit
Don't scale up: include a magnifying glass with the monitor
Now, if the pixel count gets quadrupled, then you can keep everything displayed completely the same as now, have the OS lie about resolution and scale everything internally, but also add some new API functions to allow apps to draw certain things (such as font glyphs) at the true native resolution. About seven to ten years later (!), you could consider the transitions successful because all monitors sold would be high-res, all maintained software would have been written to make use of the new API, and all toolbar icons would have been quadrupled in resolution as well.
Unfortunately, you'd still have the issue of graphics on the web, so you'd also need a new image format that would hold a low res and a high res version, and if you said something was "300px" wide, it would technically be a lie, but never mind that.
In conclusion, it's not going to happen, and you can forget it :)
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In conclusion, it's not going to happen, and you can forget it
Really? In a hundred years, the maximum vertical resolution on a display will be 1080?
The reasonable question is, 'when'? At some point current small high-res screen tech yields will be good enough that the TV companies can spend next to nothing more and have a marketing advantage. That still seems to be a few years off, unfortunately.
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I love the way you're modded "interesting" and not "funny". Some people apparently haven't given up on their faith in the legal system's ability to poke its nose where it doesn't belong. :-)
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My phone has a much lower dot pitch, it uses an lcd.
isn't this everywhere though (Score:2, Interesting)
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No. At least, hopefully not. Most of these things are controlled by raw material prices, production costs, taxes, upstream suppliers who also supply other stores, etc. The prices may seem to be fixed across lots of stores, but really lots of stores just share the same costs, and sell competitively, so prices end up much the same everywhere. For instance, most garages/petrol stations don't make much money on fuel; they make it on the snacks and cigarettes and groceries that people buy while they're payin
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Yeah ... ever hear of OPEC ? They basically do this at a multi national level. Although, I really don't know if the price would be any different if they didn't. Demand has almost outstripped supply capacities.
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I have never understood this. Every few months we hear about a new round of companies in trouble for price fixing for one product or another.
Yet OPEC gets together and does it right out in the open, heck their meetings are on the network news, and we just bend over and take it up the pooper.
I just don't get it.
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oh yeah, oil prices have often been change due to things besides supply and demand.
sounds familiar (Score:3, Interesting)
agreeing to output levels and keeping prices artificially high
Sounds familiar. [wikipedia.org]
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Or fund an alternative and tax the hell out of their product.
That would be a far better punishment.
now we can get to... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is great. Hopefully in the near future we can address price fixing in everything else, like text-messages, internet service, cell phone service .... etc etc etc.
What happened to trust busting?
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Again? (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe price fixing isn't so bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Under fixed prices, they could worry less about lowering prices and instead concentrate on quality and eliminating dead pixels.
But what we see instead is cut-throat competition on price that lowers quality. The same thing happened to the airlines after deregulation. Under regulation, prices were fixed. They now compete on price only and quality has suffered.
Sometimes competition on price can be destructive. Jobs are lost, quality suffers, and ultimately monopolies emerge after competitors have been driven out of business.
Track Record with this Bunch (Score:2)
Greg
Time for stronger laws (Score:5, Insightful)
We need jail time for decision makers. I mean serious jail time. We have seen this over and over and over again with chips and LCDs and CDs and all manner of things like this. It's not as if they don't know it's illegal. They KNOW it is illegal. It is time to either make this type of behavior legal or to get serious about the punishment. Corporations are too often shields for unethical, unlawful, immoral, inhumane, harmful and illegal behavior. When the "corporation" takes all the risk, what is to stop individuals from persisting?
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Well at least it looks like they might be getting fined here. That's better than another article here I read recently where the punishment for breaking the law is "don't break the law any more for the next 10 years please". I wish I could get that kind of treatment.
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When the "corporation" takes all the risk, what is to stop individuals from persisting?
Isn't that the purpose of the company? To move individual responsibility to an abstract legal entity.
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We need jail time for decision makers. I mean serious jail time.
Why is sentencing people to prison rape always the solution? "the punishment should fit the crime", right? Fine them 2x what they made from it, maybe bar them from holding that sort of position in the future.
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Individuals make the decisions. Fining a corporation does not punish the individuals responsible for the actions. Trying to extract "what they made from it" can and is hidden through dirty accounting tricks.
Sentencing people to prison time is a deterrent to show that they have something to lose. At the moment, they have nothing to lose.
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Fining a corporation does not punish the individuals responsible for the actions.
Which is why you fine the people responsible, as well as the corporation.
Trying to extract "what they made from it" can and is hidden through dirty accounting tricks.
I'm sure they can come up with a reasonable upper bound.
Sentencing people to prison time is a deterrent to show that they have something to lose.
So is executing them. Why don't we just do that for everything?
At the moment, they have nothing to lose.
Apart from personal fortunes and nice jobs.
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If you transfer risks to the individual people, then the people won't work for the corporations, and companies globally will crater.
Can I subscribe to your newsletter so that I may have something to burn to keep me warm when we enter the dark age that would happen if your kind of thinking gained momentum globally?
what really is price fixing? (Score:2)
What I mean is that I sometimes don't understand cases like the following:
- Companies making LCD screens are accused of price fixing for charging high prices, yet Apple, which is the only producer of
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The iPhone isn't a market, the cell phone industry is. SO if apple became the dominant players, they could have a monopoly.
Monoply law is more detailed then portrayed here on /.
Also, someone needs to file a suit. So if you are abusing your monopoly, but now one files then nothing will be done.
Too answer your last question:
Sure I would be frustrated. But just because I create the technology doesn't mean I get to stop other people from doing similar things. If you have a bread store, you can't tell me not to
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Price fixing is different than setting a price. It's not illegal to set a price, you can generally charge whatever you want and let people decide whether or not to buy it. It only becomes problematic if you control such a big portion of that particular market that you're using your position to unfairly suppress competitors, or to charge a price beyond what the market would normally accept. (Or colluding with the other players in the market to do the same). The iPhone is, at the end of the day, just a fancy
Again? (Score:2)
Really? http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202424438569 [law.com]
The only way for a fine to work... (Score:2)
...is if the fine costs far more than what was made from the corrupt action. If it isn't, then the fine is no more than a cost of doing business. As in most cases, the fine probably *won't* be greater than the profits made, and thus there is nothing good that will come of it.
Sigh (Score:4, Interesting)
If only OPEC could be held to the standards of everyone else...
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And higher power use, screen burn in(which is not fixed just covered up), and reflections worse than any CRT ever had.
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And higher power use
On the order of 30-50% higher than an LCD. Not exactly an enormous difference; most people would never see the difference in their electric bill as the consumption would still be drowned out by their refrigerator.
screen burn in(which is not fixed just covered up)
Not much of an issue on any plasma made in the last 5-10 years. The manufacturers have been aware of the problem and implemented several techniques to pretty well reduce the rate of burn-in to negligible; more LCDs have dead pixels now than plamsas have burn-in.
and reflections worse than any CRT ever had
I don't know what kind of lighti
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From my research, tis at LEAST 50%, sometime double. It's probably more then a refrigerator.
400W TV, on an average of 4 hours a day 1600 * 365 586 KW per year. A little higher then an average side by side 25cubic foot refrigerator.(about 525 KW per year
refrigerator should not be Turning on more then a 20% of the time during normal use.
They use tricks to try and hide burn in. Move the image, dim the other pixels, and so on. Both these just delay the effect.
I would rather have a TV that doesn't have burn in i
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To me it's obvious that LCD companies got sued because no large US company holds substancial interests in glass substrates design and manufacturing.
Very few US companies hold substantial interests in manufacturing anything these days, except maybe military hardware.
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