Originally posted by: magomago
Shelton Jackson Lee - United States filmmaker whose works explore the richness of Black culture in America (born in 1957)
Bzzzt.
The Inq article mentions someone from Via named Shelton Lu, I'm guessing that Intel's codename for this is intended to be more of a Via chip competetor in the marketplace.
Obviously, these chips are the bottom-scrapings from Intel's yield bin, at least I think that they will be initially. They are intended for third-world markets where price matters far more than performance. These potential customers will probably be happy to be able to afford *any* computer, even it it runs dog-slow.
If anyone remembers, the ATI Radeon 9550s were only intended for non-US markets as well.
I just find it wonderfully interesting and a tad bit ironic, that these big trans-national mega-conglomerate corporations, who rallied for years about unencumbered "global free trade", and then tried to sell their products into non-first-world markets, still at inflated first-world prices, and got laughed at by the natives, who thumbed their nose up at the corps and started their own backyard "piracy" operations instead, are being forced to *actually compete* in these markets, by doing something (at least in the case of Microsoft), that they *vowed that they would never do* - *lower their prices*.
What an amazing thought! I mean... it's not like they teach that concept in high-school economics or anything.
It also proves another thing - that monopolies can only flourish, among highly-regulated (first-world) markets. Why? Because if the prices of goods offered, is far above the range at which the purchase price is acceptable, then "piracy" will naturally develop and flourish, to fill the gap in demand for the product.
In a true unrestricted free-market economic system, "piracy" is a natural result of a "sick", unbalanced economy. The only way to effectively compete against it, is to reduce the prices such that it is no longer a factor. That is THE one thing that groups like the RIAA and MS don't want people to understand - that piracy is a symptom of a sick, over-regulated market, that allows illegal monopolies to flourish, and those companies and their pricing structure are *themselves* the cause of "piracy", not someone else.
Lower prices to reasonable free-market values and piracy will virtually eliminate itself. It's as simple as that.