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I guess you've read Eric S. Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar. You might be interested in also reading A Second Look at the Cathedral and the Bazaar. It's not directly open source criticism, and doesn't focus on business usage of free software, but it's a good read nonetheless.

It's also possible to publish a journal using fairly traditional methods of distribution, but to have a contract that allows the papers to be distributed electronically for free. There's nothing incompatible about print and electronic publishing -- lots of newspapers and magazines (e.g. Scientific American) make their articles available electronically. Well, OK, they're incompatible if your prices for the print version are ridiculously high... ;-)

For the last several years, Linux-based companies have been struggling with the problem of how to make money from free software. The problem, of course, is the difficulty of convincing users to pay for software that can be downloaded and freely copied from the Internet. Instead of paying for the software itself, Linux companies have followed several different business models that amount to charging for ancillary products and support that surround the core software, which remains free. The reasons for the development of these models is clear: Linux, and the majority of Open Source software is in economic terms a "free good", and selling a free good makes about as much sense as charging for air.

At TransGaming, we believe that in order for Linux to succeed with consumers in the long run, we need innovation not only in software development, but also in the social sphere. We need to encourage more user participation in the development process, and give users more responsibility, both financially and otherwise, for the ultimate result. We view our work on two levels: at the software level, we're creating a way for Windows games to run on Linux. At the social level, we're running an experiment in how to create a sustainable economic model for the development of free software that also gives users the incentive to participate more actively in the creative process.

One aspect of TransGaming's model is based on the Street Performer Protocol. We are licensing some of our 3D code under the Aladdin Free Public License, which restricts certain forms of commercial redistribution. Users may freely download and use the software, but will be encouraged to subscribe to our subscription service. We will not release that code under a less restrictive license (such as the Wine license) unless and until we have a paying subscriber base of at least 20,000 users. This means that our work will not be fully incorporated into the main Wine source base before that point. Further development of our work will also be predicated on that subscriber base being sustained. This gives our customers a direct incentive to stick with us - if our subscription revenue dries out, so will our release of new code.

Our customers will have several direct means of guiding the work we do. First and foremost, they will have the right to vote on which game we work on next - giving them control over our development priorities. Second, they can file bug reports to which we will respond within three working days. Users who file high-quality bug reports will not only see their bug report dealt with promptly, but will receive additional voting status, making their votes count more. Users who believe that we're doing a good job can 'tip' us, by subscribing at higher monthly charges - those who do so will of course receive a higher voting status. And finally, users who believe that we're not adequately addressing their needs can tell us so by unsubscribing altogether.

Developers in the community who want to contribute code or bug fixes to the project can do so under the Wine license, since their patches can then be distributed within our current version, under the AFPL, as well as eventually to the main WineHQ tree. Since we're always looking for skilled developers, we may offer regular contributors contracts to work on particular development areas, or games that our users have requested.

woof.

A Second Look at the Cathedral and Bazaar

Try the Street Performer Protocol (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_6/kelsey/ ). The author gets paid, the public gets what they want, no draconian copyright laws needed.

Copying of a physical item takes a considerable effort; copying of a collection of 1s and 0s is laughably trivial. If you can transport an ebook from one computer to another (i.e. from your desktop to your PDA), then it's going to be just as easy to copy it for all of your friends.

How can an ebook system allow for a person to read it on all of their devices yet prevent copying? It can't automatically differentiate between another computer of yours and someone else's computer, so any system that allows for use on all of one's devices would be intrusive and cumbersome (i.e. register it to every device you have ahead of time, but then what if you replace your PDA? How do you re-register it?).

Really, there seems to be absolutely no middle ground between content control and fair use, which I believe is why Kelsey and Schneier came up with the Street Performer Protocol.

Freedom can only exist with capitalism. Capitalism is simply free people voluntarily exchanging goods and services. If you forbid such transactions, you have substantially reduced freedom. Abuses such as the DMCA are not failures of capitalism, they are failures of government. Corporations can whine all they want about hackers or libraries daring to exercise their fair use rights, but it takes Congress and the President to enforce their will.

As usual, the Street Performer Protocol would solve this problem without oppressive copyright laws.

One solution to the attention shortage is Artificial Attention. It is exemplified by a search engine driven by a user profile that biases the search toward the user's interests. Further, the user profile would watch the user's behavior as he peruses the results of the search and modify the profile based on the user's behavior.

The dynamic behavior of the user profile would include a random factor to retrieve information marginally related to the profile. The profile would then watch which of the randomly retrieved items attracted the user's attention and modify itself accordingly.

The profile should be able to monitor the activity of similar profiles belonging to other users to create artificial word-of-mouth.

User could swap profiles with friends to expand their horizons and to build up a community of interests.

Similarly, groups of users could combine profiles to retrieve a common set of information.

A user could adopt and modify standard profiles or incorporate them into his existing profile. These profiles would be based on things of interest to a particular industry, profession or hobby. Organizations might promolgate standard profiles for users to adopt.

If attention becomes the foundation of the New Natural Economy then information might be packaged to conform to the requirements of the standard profiles. There could be an ancillary program to the user profile that rates pieces of information on how attractive it is to a standard profile.

Similarly, users might compare their profile with a standard profile to see how closely their interests are to the norm.

Ultimately, people will have life-long profiles that change overtime and that thereby constitute the intellectual history of the individual. Users will be able to quantify how much they've changed between childhood, when their profile was created, and old age.

Ultimately, user profiles of great men would be archived and made available for users to incorporate into their own profiles. Cult leaders might impose their own user profile on their followers as a way of controlling their thoughts.

Users might specify on their resumes what standard profiles they use as a way of indicating their interests to potential employers. Strangers could compare their profiles to see how much they have in common.

The first step is the creation of an ISO standard for a Profile Markup Language (PML). This standard would enable profiles to interact with search engines in a well-defined way, enable comparing profiles, enable merging profiles, etc.

I wish Tad Williams great success in his endeavor. However, it's unlikely it will succeed using the standard subscription model. A better approach would be to use the Street Performer Protocol.

The infrastructure doesn't exist for a subscription model on the Internet that effectively limits distribution to paying subscribers. Williams writes, "people start passing too many free copies of the Shadowmarch story around and we get to the point where it doesn't pay for itself anymore, then I'll have to stop doing it". In that case, Shadowmarch is as good as dead. We'll get a few good stories, then perhaps after getting involved and interested, we'll find out the experiment has been cancelled without completion. Why would I pay $20 for that risk? Perhaps subscribers would receive the remaining stories in print form. That would be less than satisfactory...a consolation prize of sorts.

Admittedly, there isn't much infrastructure for the Street Performer Protocol, either. However, there is PayPal and the Amazon.com Honor System, as well as others. Furthermore, with the Street Performer Protocol, you want people passing out copies...that's free, even "viral" marketing.

The trick is to keep people from altering the story, such as removing your attribution and instructions on how they can make a donation to support the public work. This is considerably less difficult a problem to solve than attempting to prevent "unpaid copies" from leaking out into the public. It's easier on a technical level and the incentive for cooperating with the protocol greater than the incentive to respect the copy protection of the subscription model.

It remains to be seen if the Street Performer Protocol would generate enough revenue to support the project, but that's why it's an experiment. As others have pointed out, we've already had the "limited distribution on the Internet" experiment, i.e. Stephen King's "The Plant". It was a failure.

As has been mentioned, Mandrakesofts donations page came about after numerous requests from the users. I for one am glad to see it -- I've used Mandrake since years ago, and until now I've never paid a cent for it. I love the distro and I would like some way to show it monetarily :-) But I wouldn't go out and by a boxed set because I wouldn't read the manual, I'd throw the box away, I wouldn't need support (if that's even included) and I know retailers probably make more than Mandrakesoft from these sales anyway.

Now the great thing about Mandrakesoft is that they hire lots of developers from many free software projects, like KDE, GNOME, PHP-Nuke, Plex86, Apache and many others. When you make a donation, you can mark those money for, say, KDE development. This way KDE will get better, KDE developers will eat, Mandrakesoft will save some dough and I can sleep at night.

In my opinion Mandrakesoft is heading in the right direction -- their way of income is a lot better than that of SuSE, which seeks to sell more boxes by making it extremely difficult to download their distro. And it's better than that of Red Hat, which charges for services such as automated software updates (which is included free with Mandrake).

Indeed, I think Mandrakesoft is discovering the future ideal way of making free software and still eat three meals a day. Their method is in many ways compliant with The Street Performer Protocol, in that users will pay up if and only if they actually like what they get.
--

They skipped gnutella because, as far as peer to peer systems go, it sucks. Research papers such as Free Riding on Gnutella and Why Gnutella Can't Scale, No, Really articulate this much better than I can. The success rate of pirating music via Gnutella is much less than those of napster, aimster, and community-based hotline servers.

The RIAA admitted this, if you remember :)

So, maybe you could have done just a little bit more digging and found this, which gives a full background of the story, including multiple quotes from Vint Cerf - arguably one of the real Internet inventors - who has attempted to defend Al Gore's statement many times.

But then, if you dig too hard, you might actually come up with something closer to the truth, and who wants the truth if it clashes with one's preconceived notions.

3. A system where artists can be voluntarily compensated by their fans without any copyright enforcement, such as the Street Performer Protocol.

It's called the Street Performer Protocol. It's worked for Prince and (in modified form) Stephen King. Hell, it could keep the record business around by recasting them as venture capitalists.

For some interesting stats and commentary on how most Gnutella users simply leach off of 1% of all users contribute 50% of the files, check out

http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/adar/in dex.html

Amazon jumping into this space is clearly a direct attack on paypal's dominance in "what-passes-for-micropayments-nowadays", which is in turn a validation of what paypal is doing. The two biggest problems with the first generation of micropayment systems was

1. ease of use (not)
2. proprietary and patented "standards"

The open source community and the independant music scene needs to join forces. Here's a quote from a recent post to the Pho list:

"I don't know any hacker who doesn't think that musicians should get paid for their music. Some of my hacker friends compose music. I don't know any musicians that aren't excited by the subversive nature of the Internet and peered distribution mechanisms and, consequently, who don't respect hackers. Why don't we both work together, put down our swords, figure out how to put bread in each other's mouths (yes, even hackers are having a harder time than usual with that these days) and subvert the structure that has caused this unnatural schizm between us?"

Because it's not about money, it's about control. Culture is the most important commodity because it's the one that sells all the others, not only overtly through advertising, but implicitly, by establishing "social norms", subtle biases, and hidden assumptions. As the content and ads, news and entertainment blend and become one, the public is immersed in a bland and shallow "reality" in which they pretty much go along with anything.

The internet gives independant culture a chance, however slim, to reach a large audience without having to go through the mediation of "the industry" - and this is the greatest terror of partisans of the neo-feudal "new world order". For similar reasons, 'anonymous cash' micropayment systems have been "fumbled" by those who should have been developing and promoting standards - ie. governments and banks - because they see it - quite rightly - as potentially sewing the seeds of their own demise.

An open-source micropayment system could provide a way for fans to pay artists directly, with no middle man. Such a system would have to be established on a "web of trust" model, to avoid any possibility of control by dubious central "authorities". It would require the cooperation of many people, all over the world, to overcome the obvious chicken-and-egg problem, but the history of the net suggests that this may not be as unlikely as it appears. We propose to call this system a potlatch network, after the gift festivals of the northwest coast. Napster et al. is providing one half of a gift economy - we need to complete the circuit by providing a way for fans to support their favorite artists. The implicit contract is an informal version of Kelsey and Shneier's Street Performer Protocol, in which payments are effectively for future works - the carrot rather than the stick: "give us money and we'll release more art." Steven King's experiment was reported as a failure by the New York Times - but he made $600,000 dollars with virtually no expences. (read King's reply to the NYT.)

This not only can work, it is working. What Amazon's doing is an attempt to insinuate themselves into a central position as experiments in voluntary payments (micro- or otherwise) begin to mature. And we all know how much we can trust Amazon, right? We're interested in any insight or assistance in specing out this proposed network, comments welcome - jim at potlatch dot net or visit the url atop this msg for more info.

Legion303 replied that "Its precursors were light-sensitive receptors that slowly (remember, it took billions of years) changed into what most mammals have today."

But the fossil record contradicts Legion303's statement. My earlier post mentioned complexity theory - complex structures/behaviours can arise spontaneously - they self organise. It did not take billions of years for the retina to develop. Darwin himself confessed to an American friend that "[the] eye to this day gives me a cold shudder."

I do not reject natural selection, just the view that it is the only source of order. An example was given by Kauffman - consider the multitude of shapes of bicycles that were first spawned - this is complexity. Over time the less efficient designs were winnowed out - evolution at work.

Incidentally, while researching, I came across Complexity applied to GNU/Linux development.

I'm disappointed that John didn't answer the first question. It was, by far, the most interesting question posed to them.

I read the first question, which was basically, "What do you think about the Street Performer Protocol?" I followed that link, and saw a 6500-word document that resembled a manifesto or research paper. It starts, "Consider a world without copyright enforcement", which makes me think, great, someone has come up with what they think is a great idea, but is probably untested, or even been thoroughly debated. I looked at my clock, saw that I had about 5 minutes of lunch break left, and decided to skip it, maybe come back to it tommorrow.

I probably know John's answer to question 1: No, I don't know about it, and I'm too busy answering these other 9 questions that I know something about, to read some undergraduate student's thesis and comment on it.

That being said, maybe it would be interesting to get the opinion of someone in the music world on this thing, and TMBG would be a good candidate. Better than Limp Bizkit, at least.

Joshua

Terradot

What if a novel equivalent of napster appeared... how would authors make money then?

Check out the street performer protocol. Stephen King tried this recently, apparently with success. Also, bear in mind that an actual book is way more readable than any electronic equivelant, and will continue to be so for quite a long time.

One of the ideas is that you say "I will release this book when fans have donated X dollars", with the book having already been written and given to a trusted party. That way once the monetary goal is reached the book is released, and the author doesn't need to worry about people copying it because he has already gotten the money he wanted. He will in fact want to have people copy it, so that his work would become more popular and that there would be more demand for his next work.

• No chance of getting back your donation if the author decides not to publish - as has already been pointed out in this thread, presumably your money belongs to King whether or not he actually publishes the last third of his book. The protocol calls for this money to revert back to the donor.
• Not public domain - King is restricting resale of his novel. This is a bit silly in the context of the protocol. The point of the public-domain phase is to get the work distributed as much as possible, so that many people are exposed to it, maximizing the number who donate.
• No hash - The protocol calls for a cryptographic hash of the work to be published, so that its integrity may be verified when it reaches the public eye. This one's perhaps excusable; King is an established author and we trust him enough to let him write the last third of the book after he gets all the donations in. It wouldn't work at all for a no-name author trying to make a mark, though.
• Not a flat rate - This is the killer. King is implicitly assuming by providing a percentage that he'll be able to track how many people are reading the book. Ain't going to happen. Inevitably, mirrors will spring up, and every download from a mirror is essentially $0.75 right out of King's pocket. If he really wants to get into the spirit of this experiment, he should give up all hopes of controlling or tracking the myriad copies of his novel, and a flat rate on donations is the only way to truly dissociate himself from the old-media ideas of control.

1) This is not 'one of the few cases'! As far as straight (civil) libel goes, existing 'cyberlaw' goes back to the 80's, with mailing lists and BBSs and has definitely been upheld internationally. "international" is important, because you can be sued in jurisdiction where the 'damage' occurs or where the 'victim' resides. Here are some cases/sources:

• Here's a Richmond Law Review (Va.) article suggesting unified approaches to cyber-defamation.
• Here's a Harvard Law Review article on cyberlaw.
• Here's a Georgia State review article of Alabama cyber defamation law (for details and contrast with Utah)
• Blakeley v. Continental Airlines is a 1999 case involving a private company-only BBS
• Rindos v. Hardwick was a famous case where an American was successfully sued in Australian courts for defamation on a e-mail list. [Summary] [Judgement]
• A CyberLibel FAQ -- primarily non-US 'British tradition' (Australia, Canada) useful as a basis for further understanding.
• Here's a 1994 Australian review of Defamation laws in cyberspace.
• Here's a course reading list (with links to cases and other resources embedded in the course outline) for a comparison of in the US and Australia with references to other law (Roman, English, Dutch, etc.) It hits some very relevant points in vey few words.
• Here's a review of British cyber-defamation law (incl. BBS and e-mail)
• Similar US Criminal Libel cases against students have been reported widely in the media for years (names are not cited, because they are minors): [Colorado, 1997 (ACLU) and verdict, 1998]
• Nervous? maybe you should be Here's a (English language, published in Denmark) peer-reviewed law journal article on 'Defamation Havens' ('peer-review' is when articles are reviewed by experts before publication)

2) Do a websearch for "criminal libel" and you'll find that its primary use worldwide, historically and currently is against journalists . One of the 'Inciting Abuses' that contributed to the American Revolution was a (then British) court verdict that a newspaper was guilty of defaming the reputation of the Governer-General of New York by (accurately) revealing his corruption.

• Criminal Libel use.abuse is often cited in the annual US State Department Human Rights reports on each country. [Gabon, 1999]
• In Ireland, journalistic websites get away with a great deal that print journalism can't.

3) To address another of Katz's points, here are mini-case studies in dysfunctional human behaviour on the net

Katz was on my 'exclude list' for a few months, not because I dislike his writing, but because his loose use of facts and analogies leads to a sloppy, infuriating discussion. A profesional writer should investigate his facts and limit his speculation to what those facts support; If he doesn't, the readers will certainly go hogwild. This is the first Katz article I've read in a while. I am not pleased.

People pay in advance. A third party holds the payments in trust. Payments are totalled and the total can be publically viewed. When the payments add up to an agreed figure, the work gets released into the public domain, and the author keeps the money. More complete detail here.

I am, and every day I see my university's mania for "computer-assisted learning" further marginalizing and alienating the weaker students.

Oh, sure, some students thrive in a computer-intensive environment, but they're the students who would succeed in a traditional classroom as well. I read their essays, respond to their homework, and see no differences between the work they do with computers and the work they do with pencil and paper.

The weaker students, however, find computers to be just one more hurdle to jump in an educational system that already puts too many barriers in their path.

We hear the education gurus talking oh-so-seriously about "breaking the credit for contact model of education," yet anyone who's ever taught real students knows that the bottom third of any class needs contact with a living, breathing human being who can explain material to them, sometimes repeatedly. The educationists claim that students are becoming "more connected" with their teachers through the use of e-mail, web boards, chat, and other online tools, yet students complain perennially about their frustrated desires for more face-to-face contact with their instructors. Sure, the best students often want to be left alone while they work, contacting teachers and advisors only occasionally, but guess what? The best students aren't the only ones.

I've seen this in action numerous times. I've been participating in a pilot project at my university to introduce the use of computers into first-year writing courses. The best students take off and fly in the new environment, and of course these are the students chosen to pose for publicitiy photos with beaming administrators and "instructional designers." Careful comparisons of their work to that of comparable students from previous semesters, however, reveals no qualitative difference--they're doing the same work they'd be doing without the expensive hardware and networked classrooms.

The weaker students are a different story. In their exit surveys they pine woefully for simpler tools, less time spent on technology instruction, more emphasis on traditional methods and less on what's trendy. Ironically, these are the students who, according to the gurus, are supposed to benefit from the new environment. The oppressive "sage on the stage" model of education, we're told, is the primary cause of poor student performance, and new "modes" are required to reach "at risk" students. Oddly, every time we try something new in the classroom, overall student performance declines until we return to traditional models.

The elitism of the computerized classroom aside, logistical problems create nightmares for teachers and students alike. Any class predicated on interaction between students can be disrupted by a single student who didn't prepare, didn't read the assignment, didn't bring materials to class. How much worse does this get when students not only have to manage themselves, but complicated computer equipment as well?

Who here has worked tech support? You were dealing primarily with adults, right? How do you think you'd respond if asked to administer a couple of hundred laptops with customized software, each in the hands of a teenager or pre-teen who may or may not know anything at all about computers? Now, throw in a few dozen faculty, all of whom also may know nothing about computers but who can't afford to lose face in front of the students. Add a handful of young hackers who are going to try to compromise computer and network security just for the sheer thrill of it. Post your reaction as replies to this message, if you will; I'd really like to show a few of them to my bosses.

Please, those of you who are still enthusiastic about proposals to equip students with laptops, go visit a middle school and sit through a couple of classes. Teachers are frustrated enough when class is disrupted for ill-prepared pupils, endless assemblies and announcements, pointless "activities," and the like. Now, they have to put up with "Teacher, my laptop crashed!" as well?

For an interesting if somewhat reactionary take on the subject, read David F. Noble's Digital Diploma Mills. Noble's main target is trendy educational theory at universities, but his basic message applies equally well to primary education.

SPP is the antidote. It's basically the honor system with this twist: the donations are pre-emptive, held in trust by a third party, and when they reach the "price" of the work, it's released into the public domain by the author, and he gets his money.

Dude, get in touch with your local library school, in Ann Arbor: The School of Information at UMICH. Faculty will be overjoyed to visit Holland, meet with library administrators and townspeople, and share their experiences.

Here at UNC's School of Information and Library Science, the faculty (me included) wrote a long letter to a community considering such censoring software. It helped.

--ac

I agree that people like to be rewarded for their effort. I think that there are other methods of reward that make sense and don't require extreme counter-intuitive and fictional concepts of property to get them done. Information in and of itself is worthless: something with infinite supply has no demand, and hence, no value. However, the *creation* of information is valuable, because creation takes time and time is not limitless (well, in terms of a fraction of a lifespan). So, if those that product information charged up front for their effort, they wouldn't need to rely upon some completely arbitrary idea that somehow they own what they invent.

If people really *owned* ideas, should Newton be paid royalties for every time a plane flies, a car moves, and an apple falls? No, that's crazy. He didn't invent the concepts of gravity, he just discovered them.

Likewise, should Shakespeare be paid for every time someone used the theme of two lovers from different tribes? No, he didn't invent that idea, he simply discovered it and publicized it.

Finally, should somebody be paid for every time someone reads a book? No, they didn't invent those words, they merely discovered that arranging them in a certain fashion happens to produce a story.

People don't invent ideas. They discover them.



http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/ issue4_6/kelsey/

Seems like y'all *want* Mozilla to fail.

My sentiments exactly... the TIME piece was drivel, completely uninformed and misleading, yet we have /.ers blathering about the delays and some sort of "war". Ironically, an item posted on the front page here provides a great deal of insight into why we don't have a "Netscape 5", yet, and why that is a Good Thing!

Most OSS projects could only hope to be this healthy- how many nascent OSS projects have their own 'zine in addition to the project website? Rest assured that all the detractors and nay-sayers will be the first ones extolling the virtues of the browser when it is completed.

Unlike Microsoft's ideal of the web browser as an "OS integrated" marketing tool, the Mozilla crew are building a standards compliant browser that fits into Berners-Lee's ideals, has true technical merit, and will deliver on the promises that neither of the "big browsers" delivered in the past.

The most insightful piece of that article, which I'm sure the author didn't even grasp, was referring to the Mozilla project as an OSS experiment. The lessons learned about the OSS development model in this project may have an even greater impact than the software produced. Most importantly, as others have tried to communicate, patience is key. As Nikolai Bezroukov stated, "Speed kills". I personally hope that the mainstream media believes Mozilla to be dead. Hopefully, that will ease some of the stress placed upon the core Mozilla team. I'm sure we're all glad that they dumped the old code.

Enough ranting... viva Mozilla! :)


"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."

ESR has posted his responce to Nikolai Bezroukov's criticism. ESR states that he "welcomes such criticism" but that Nikolai "adds almost nothing useful to the debate."

It is also interesting to note that studies have shown that there is little instructional benefit in computers as currently deployed. In fact, some people decry the increasing commoditisation of education. The biggest problem I see is that while information in books can last for decades, computer technology is outdated within 3 years, leading to increasing reinventment of time to update teaching material, often at a higher penalty. Hence the interest in OpenSource which is human readable and can be adapted for whatever technology is likely to arrive. The ongoing costs, both operational and replacement is an invisible overhead that is ulimately bourne by the students, whether in fees or additional staffing overheads. The open question is whether this leads to "superior" pedalogical benefits. While neater essays (downloaded from the web) may be easier on the marker's eyes and encyclopedias can be more compactly stored, highly technical or professional areas are dependent on the understanding and mastery of quite difficult concepts and I've yet to see any technology that can accelerate this task. Also what computer can teach creativity, curiosity or the love of learning?

As for the role of corporations in universities, the issue is that either the individual pays (through loans or parental support), industry chips in with scholarships or the state subsidises (through regressive taxes). Thus education can be funded through future, present or past income (with endless policy debates among the funders). The increasing elimination of low-end blue and white collar jobs lost to automation and computerisation means that a larger bulk of the population shifts onto the higher education system which was never designed for massification. The question still remains is who gets to pay for this education? If the army could sponsor people through the GI Bill, why not corporations? If RedHat or TransMeta sponsored internships, would people be complaining? If so, then you could shift to Britain or Australia where studies have shown it is 30-40% cheaper. Given the increasing global mobility and availability of choice, there's probably a place somewhere that fits people's desires and budgets but ultimately you only get out what you invest in sweat.

Besides, there are many ways to learning about the world, backpack through Europe/Asia, raid a library, chat with your grandparents abour the lessons of their youth, or listen to the great speeches of past leaders. Given the wide variety, there's no need for formal schooling to get in way of an education.

LL

It is also interesting to note that studies have shown that there is little instructional benefit in computers as currently deployed. In fact, some people decry the increasing commoditisation of education. The biggest problem I see is that while information in books can last for decades, computer technology is outdated within 3 years, leading to increasing reinventment of time to update teaching material, often at a higher penalty. Hence the interest in OpenSource which is human readable and can be adapted for whatever technology is likely to arrive. The ongoing costs, both operational and replacement is an invisible overhead that is ulimately bourne by the students, whether in fees or additional staffing overheads. The open question is whether this leads to "superior" pedalogical benefits. While neater essays (downloaded from the web) may be easier on the marker's eyes and encyclopedias can be more compactly stored, highly technical or professional areas are dependent on the understanding and mastery of quite difficult concepts and I've yet to see any technology that can accelerate this task. Also what computer can teach creativity, curiosity or the love of learning?

As for the role of corporations in universities, the issue is that either the individual pays (through loans or parental support), industry chips in with scholarships or the state subsidises (through regressive taxes). Thus education can be funded through future, present or past income (with endless policy debates among the funders). The increasing elimination of low-end blue and white collar jobs lost to automation and computerisation means that a larger bulk of the population shifts onto the higher education system which was never designed for massification. The question still remains is who gets to pay for this education? If the army could sponsor people through the GI Bill, why not corporations? If RedHat or TransMeta sponsored internships, would people be complaining? If so, then you could shift to Britain or Australia where studies have shown it is 30-40% cheaper. Given the increasing global mobility and availability of choice, there's probably a place somewhere that fits people's desires and budgets but ultimately you only get out what you invest in sweat.

Besides, there are many ways to learning about the world, backpack through Europe/Asia, raid a library, chat with your grandparents abour the lessons of their youth, or listen to the great speeches of past leaders. Given the wide variety, there's no need for formal schooling to get in way of an education.

LL

It is also interesting to note that studies have shown that there is little instructional benefit in computers as currently deployed. In fact, some people decry the increasing commoditisation of education. The biggest problem I see is that while information in books can last for decades, computer technology is outdated within 3 years, leading to increasing reinventment of time to update teaching material, often at a higher penalty. Hence the interest in OpenSource which is human readable and can be adapted for whatever technology is likely to arrive. The ongoing costs, both operational and replacement is an invisible overhead that is ulimately bourne by the students, whether in fees or additional staffing overheads. The open question is whether this leads to "superior" pedalogical benefits. While neater essays (downloaded from the web) may be easier on the marker's eyes and encyclopedias can be more compactly stored, highly technical or professional areas are dependent on the understanding and mastery of quite difficult concepts and I've yet to see any technology that can accelerate this task. Also what computer can teach creativity, curiosity or the love of learning?

As for the role of corporations in universities, the issue is that either the individual pays (through loans or parental support), industry chips in with scholarships or the state subsidises (through regressive taxes). Thus education can be funded through future, present or past income (with endless policy debates among the funders). The increasing elimination of low-end blue and white collar jobs lost to automation and computerisation means that a larger bulk of the population shifts onto the higher education system which was never designed for massification. The question still remains is who gets to pay for this education? If the army could sponsor people through the GI Bill, why not corporations? If RedHat or TransMeta sponsored internships, would people be complaining? If so, then you could shift to Britain or Australia where studies have shown it is 30-40% cheaper. Given the increasing global mobility and availability of choice, there's probably a place somewhere that fits people's desires and budgets but ultimately you only get out what you invest in sweat.

Besides, there are many ways to learning about the world, backpack through Europe/Asia, raid a library, chat with your grandparents abour the lessons of their youth, or listen to the great speeches of past leaders. Given the wide variety, there's no need for formal schooling to get in way of an education.

LL

The author analyzes the standard types of terrorist organizations, and then tries to apply this model to the "cracker" mentality. This may work in a few cases, but most cyber-attacks do not fit the traditional terrorist mold. A much better format would be to discuss the "cracker" mentality separately, and then compare this to the more conventional terrorist. The differences are not just economic; the author seems to completely miss the concept that many damaging attacks are not carried out by people with an agenda.

The article should add or expand upon the following concepts:

• Hacker / cracker psychology. This is often very different from terrorist psychology. Many crackers do not have a political agenda; they are simply thrill-seekers who want to watch other people react, or snoopers who are curious to see if something is possible or not. An excellent article here is Homesteading the Noosphere by Eric S. Raymond.
• Organization. Although the author acknowledges the existence of ad-hoc loosely structured organizations, he seems to believe that all terrorists must belong to an organization to have an effect. This is simply untrue when dealing with cyber-terrorism, where a lone hacker can have a devasting impact. The author of the Melissa virus, for example, caused an enormous amount of disruption all by himself.
• Motivation. Crackers, as discussed above, have a very different psychology than most terrorists. As a result, cracker motivation cannot be lumped in the same discussion as terrorist motivation. Economic motivation is barely mentioned here, but it will increase significantly as e-commerce becomes more mainstream.
• Cyber terrorism targets. This needs to be analyzed in conjunction with cracker psychology, because a "good" target to a religious group would not necessarily interest a cracker. Many cyber attacks, such as viruses, do not have a specific target at all.
• IT asset types. The author needs to distinguish between information assets and physical / IT infrastructure assets, and discuss which are more likely targets. Most security-aware organizations do not put highly sensitive (military, corporate, etc.) data on servers that are accessible to the Internet, and design their WWW servers to be "disposable" (easily reinstalled from CD or tape). These organizations also typically keep their servers in restricted-access areas.
• IT asset backups. Most organizations with sensitive data keep off-site backups. Write-once CDs are becoming very popular because they are inexpensive, compact, and convenient to restore from. To cause serious and lasting damage, a terrorist would need to destroy or corrupt not only the contents of the hard drives, but the backups as well. This is much more difficult if backups are stored off-site.
• IT infrastructure weaknesses. In many cases, IT infrastructure still has a single point of failure, such as a trunk line that can be taken out by a backhoe. Conventional CBRN attacks are not nearly this easy.

I'd like to see this validated or debunked.

I found this:

Publishing A book which sells for $40 can be produced at a marginal cost of $2. This gap between price and marginal cost has led to a variety of forms of differential pricing. Book clubs, hardcover and paperback editions, and remaindered books are all examples of the ways that the product characteristics and adjusted to support differential pricing.

here. That doesn't make it true, but it sounds reasonable.

"Price discrimination" and "differential pricing" seem to be the keywords.

I was thinking that O'Reilly could attempt to build (even more) customer loyalty by not trying to use price discrimination.

I gladly fork over $10 under the Street Performer Protocol to the first functional SDMI converter/stripper which successfully (and reliably) output MP3 files. I wish I had the technical know-how to make it happen myself, but... Anyone with me?