Necessary Evil?

[ray.wurlod]

In this post Ken claims that cable television companies and car dealerships are necessary evils. It occurs to me to ask in what way either of these is necessary.

[ArndW]

I don't know about cable companies (I don't have a TV) but if it weren't for car dealerships what kind of stores would they put on the major throughfares leaving US cities? And what other commercials could you see on local TV at 2am?

[kcbland]

Choices for high-speed internet are offered by cable TV companies (cable modem), satellite dish, or DSL lines (phone companies). I almost mentioned phone companies as well. Without high-speed internet, there's no ability to work from home thru VPN. "Necessary" if your customer doesn't allow you to be onsite.

Buying cars in America thru dealerships is an arduous task. America is progressing towards a lot of internet based purchasing. I actually bought a car thru the internet once, no interaction with a dealer, no price negotiation, etc. The problem occurred when I had to drive to the dealer to pick it up. The car I bought wasn't the one I drove home because they convinced me once I got there I didn't want the green one but the white one over there. Car dealerships use psychological tactics to get people to buy cars, filling folks with liquids so they're eager to wrap up negotiations so they can go to the bathroom, etc. It's amazing the techniques they use to get people to buy. But you have really no other options for buying a new car. You can't simply configure, order and have one delivered.

[ArndW]

Ken - I almost ended up buying a Saturn because I was told that it was the only dealership where "what you see is what you pay" and that there were no negotiations about pricing at all. That alone was enough to convince me of buyng a type of car I really didn't want. Unfortunately the saleslady was a novice and made me drive by the BMW dealership during my test drive...

[ray.wurlod]

Being in a different city, often a different country, every week I feel no need to own either a car or a television. Which is why - at least for me - neither car dealerships nor cable television companies are necessary.

[chulett]

I'd say Ken meant for the Average Joe... and you fall well outside of that, Ray. Well.

[kcbland]

I bought a Saturn to avoid all of the hassles, no negotiation, just pick the colors and features. I actually went in, picked everything out, they ordered it from the factory and 8 weeks later it arrived with a note from the guy who made sure it was made perfectly to order. I loved that car, but my ability to buy more expensive cars took me outside their product range.

America is more than just the east and west coast population centers. "Fly-over" country is a derogatory term folk use to describe traveling between the only places in America that matter. It's disgusting, because the majority of people, products, tax revenue, etc come from the heartland. We drive cars because we live in houses with lots of spaces in between. I grew up watching Sesame Street totally unable to relate to folks who lived in tower apartments, walked to markets, never drove a car. I grew up on a farm where my nearest neighbor was 1 mile away, we drove to the market once a week. My "home town" was 3000 people, no stoplights, 1 high school, etc. The point being a car was necessary, two if you count a truck for utility purposes and a car for going to church.

Back to the original point, Windoze is a necessary evil, there are no other options. Mac? Lindoze? BeOS? Amiga? C-64? I've got two TI99-4/a's in my office, perfect working order, fired them up 2 months ago to see if the machines were still working, love that speech synthesizer module. Some days I wish I could use those.

[Ultramundane]

Barking...
I listened to the money warped car and driver magazine articles and bought one of them non-US cars. It was a new Toyota Corolla. I had the car in about 7 times because Toyota could not stop the car from vibrating. Finally, after cursing at them many times, they said it was an engine problem and bought the car back. It was a brand new car! So much for quality. I will never buy a Toyota piece of garbage again. I went across the road to the Chevy dealership and bought a new Chevy Cavalier at half the price. So far I have put 180000 miles on it and it still gets 36 MPG. Car and driver says the Cavalier sucks. I guess it is best car that sucks that I have ever owned.

[kcbland]

If only PC OS's were as varied as car makers and with options. I mean, really, I use Windoze for word processing, email, news, shopping, etc. I remember Windoze 3.1 like yesterday, it would be absolutely sufficient for todays use.

Unfortunately, all the junk added into Windoze makes it so aweful to use. The majority of us only use a portion of the OS anyway. It's like buying PX when you only need to move a couple of hundred rows of data once a week. You can't get a slim version of Windoze XP and then option in the functionality required.

It's ridiculous this memory hog bloated code. I've got the Vista beta cd's sitting on my shelf. I've got the x64 as well. It's nuts, it's on a DVD ROM now, it's too fat to fit on a CD.

I'm heading in the linux direction, but fat chance using DataStage client on one.

[ray.wurlod]

Red Brick still is set up to install off 1.44MB floppy disks!

[vmcburney]

I have the definitive "necessary evil": parking inspectors.

[kcbland]

Proctologists

[vmcburney]

Proctologists

I would call that a necessary discomfort rather than a necessary evil! They do have the patients best interest at heart (unlike the parking inspector).

[chulett]

I'm not sure 'at heart' is the appropriate expression.