So what ?

O João Rodrigues desenvolve sobre o conceito de poder de mercado, que consiste em A obrigar B a escolher o que é mais vantajoso para A.

O que eu não consegui perceber, são os problemas que advêm do poder de mercado. Nenhuma empresa tem o poder de exigir o preço que bem entender aos consumidores. Pela pura e simples razão, que os consumidores não têm uma impressora de dinheiro debaixo da cama. Ao contrário do governo, que dorme com uma. Se o preço for demasiado elevado, o produto pura e simplesmente não vende.

Não significa isto que não existam "distorções éticas" (penso que é sobre isto que o João tem vindo a falar) no preço de um determinado producto. Mas as alternativas que eu conheço são: (i) chamar o governo ao barulho (com as vantagens e desvantagens inerentes) ou (ii) dar a cada um uma impressora como em tempos reclamou celébre economista do PCP, Odete Santos de seu nome.

Num outro post, o João chama a atenção para as transacções desesperadas que ocorrem na venda de orgãos. Não precisava de ir tão longe, tinha um exemplo mais perto. Experimente chamar um canalizador quando tem uma fuga em casa, um serralheiro quando se esqueceu das chaves dentro de casa ou mudar a fechadura quando a mesma foi arrombada. Nessa situação as pessoas estão também desesperadas (no sentido em que necessitam mesmo de resolver o problema). A título de exemplo, quando me assaltaram o apartamento houve uma empresa que me pediu 300 euros para instalar uma fechadura naquela tarde, ou 180 se fosse só no dia seguinte.

Todas estas "distorções éticas" nos preços nos parecem injustas, no mínimo. Mas existem alternativas melhores ? Que eu saiba, não.

8h25 Update

After some pain and sweat I was able to determine that it was the hard drive that suddenly decided to exist no more.

But the nice people at ActiveMedia offered to replace it, despite the six months warranty for the robot was already over. Now, if only they could design their robots a little better....

Guess what

On top of not being able to plug in anything to the onboard computer of the robot, yesterday the hard drive committed suicide. Either that, or the BIOS just went cocoo. It does not really matter since I had already came to the conclusion that the onboard computer was of no use at all.

Yeah, ActiveMedia Robotics sucks.... Big time !

Brazilean bandits

the government of Lula da Silva, of course.

If anything, the recent events in the brazilean air trafic show how easy it is to destroy public infrastructures:

1) Elect for president an iliterate, known for it's fond of cachaça, and who's only strong point is (was) being poor

2) Populate government and public administration with the ruling party boys, and their relatives

All you have to do is just wait for the corruption scandals and public infrastructures to start colapsing. It sould be noted of course, that Mr. Lula party oficcials started by saying they would cleanup corruption from Brazil to end up claiming that they are no worse, corruption wise, than the previous governments.

O Brasil está entregue á bandidagem.

ActiveMedia Robotics sucks

As part of my Phd work, I have three P3-AT robots, from ActiveMedia Robotics, to work with. They are market towards research labs, so I would expect they could be easily modified or adapted to suit research ideas.

I wish ! They are less versitle than a tuna fish !

For example, they have an onboard computer with five USB ports. The trouble is that two of them are mounted almost on top of a wheel axis to allow a connector to be plugged in. The other three are mounted so close to the robot hull, that the only way to plug in connectors is to unmount the onboard computer. To do this, the robot hull must be almost all complete dissambled. Conclusion, only three USB ports can be used provided that you have specially thin USB connectors and time and patience to tear the robot apart.

Then I tried to mount a Sick LMS-200 laser, a fairly standard piece of hardware in mobile robotics. The trouble is that the laser requires 24V and the robot only has available 12V. ActiveMedia provide a package to connect the laser to the robot, but it costs $ 2.500 ! It should be noted that you can buy a DC-DC converter for less than $100 !

I fail to understand what possibly can they gain from preventing people to use their robots. Again I must agree with Bill Gates when he said that robotics are at the same point that computers where 30 years ago: big, disfuntional and confined to research labs.

Everything has a beggining

and, I hope, also an ending.