Well I certainly agree that there are some grants available and that some companies do rip people off. I can't agree with your analogy though. Once again you are talking about a product that has a huge market. Braille displays don't. If Adaptive technology companies followed your advice and removed products from the market if the price doesn't drop dramatically then there would be no products available for us to use at any price. I don't think that is a good solution. I am constantly pushing to lower the prices of our products. I sincerely hope that someday the price of technology drops so that all of us can afford whatever device we need or want. You just can't compare the Adaptive technology market to other markets though. For example If you want to buy a laptop you can go into any store and get a demo of that laptop. If someone wants a demo of a Braille display cnaces are that someone has to travel to their home or office and do the demo. Sometimes this is accross town but sometimes it is accross the state. People can't provide this service without getting some compensation for there time. On the other hand I usually spend several hours working with my customers to get them up and running. Try getting this from Wallmart. Anyway, I'm not trying to be argumentative. As I have said I truly wish the prices were better too. I also think that this is getting a bit off topic and I don't want to do that to the list. So I won't continue this debate here. I do think it is important to compare Aples to Aples though when we talk about these issues. Tommy p.s. Our company has never gotten a government grant to do research. These grants aren't nearly as easy to obtain as you might think. -----Original Message----- From: blinux-list-admin@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:blinux-list-admin@xxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of jude dashiell Sent: Monday, July 21, 2003 3:53 PM To: blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Papermeier Braillex ELBA note taker The companies like aagi.com can be expected to have high prices at the start of a product life cycle because of new technology. However over a product life cycle prices should decrease or products need to be withdrawn from the market. Research costs are no excuse for continued high prices since grants are available to do research. Johnson & Johnson was given a product by the Federal Government to market to deworm sheep called lavamasol. Government research and been the sole research on this product during its entire life cycle. The company marketed to farmers at $1.50 per pill and made the pills golf ball sized. Then Government research found out lavamasol could be used to fight human colon cancer. So Johnson & Johnson made a pill of lavamasol for humans and charged $1,500.00 per pill. Johnson & Johnson's lame excuse was research costs, well certainly not on lavamasol. They're still getting away with it today so far as I know and this outrage started during the Clinton administration. Guess why your medical insurance costs so much. Those costs do get spread if not for insurance then directly back to the taxpayer. The reason for that is the Hill-Burton Act which helped out rural hospitals in america in exchange for them keeping a certain number of beds open for people who couldn't pay for hospitalization. If lavamasol gets used on those patients, hospitals have to increase everyone's bill a little to pay for it and those increases get paid by medical insurance and that's how these prices go through the roof. Malpractice insurance is a red herring, the fact is judges wipe out or minimize most malpractice judgements against the medical profession anyway. Medicare hasn't had its price list updated since the early 1970's and vendors and congress like it like that. -- Registered as user #315636 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/! _______________________________________________ Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list _______________________________________________ Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list