Sun Says Hardware Will Be Free

ron_ivi writes "Reuters reports that Sun's President and COO thinks hardware will be free and that people will pay for software subscriptions instead. Reuters quotes Schwartz: 'In our world, you will subscribe to the software and the hardware is free.' 'Directionally, our expectation is that in fiscal 2005 you're going to see a rapid departure from selling hardware, software and services apart.' 'Bill Gates and I agree that within four to five years hardware will be free.' We've recently read here on /. how Gates thinks hardware will be free."

Comments

Two competing models

[Quixote]

There are two competing models here.
1. Hardware is "free", software costs money. Analogy would be the cable TV box. You get the box for free, but you pay for the software (programming).
2. Hardware costs money, software is "free". Example would be broadcast media (broadcast TV, radio).

Guess which one the conglomerates like? (hint: 1).

Only time will tell which model succeeds.

Unlike the TV/Radio industry, the content in the computer world can be created by anyone (hence the FLOSS movement). This would seem to tip the balance in favor of #2.

Unless, of course, suitable laws can be passed... and seeing how apathetic the voters are ("look! over there!! shiny things!!!"), it is only a matter of time before writing software becomes encumbered with patents, licensing (i.e. software professionals will have to be "certified"), etc., thereby tipping the balance in favor of #1 above.

Count down to Asian Tea Party

[properler]

So Scott and Bill got in bed together to lock computers with DRM. Kiss of death for Sun. News at eleven.

But this schems works if everyone follows. Microsoft can try. XBox are not servers. MS easily can lock them, locked servers are next to useless.

Problem with that DRM game is that China and India won't follow. China is starting boiling its own standards to avoid American patents. Smart ass analysts say "fragmenting the market is dangerous". Well, a potential market of 1.2 billions people with two main languages is not that fragmented. Someone should tell this guys from Big Apple that there is something south of the Statue of Liberty!

Oh, and most of manufacturing is in Asia. America is working hard so that support and engineering will soon be there too. Europe will probably do the same. :(

Now about content.
Bill and Scott think the real value is software and content (music, movies). Problem is that Asia and easter Europe is starting to be good there to. Interesting that Tarentino movie blinks at asiatic movies. At least he is aware, that the strength of america is to be a melting pot. America can lock itself in DRM and get its culture even more inbred than it has recently become. Choice: Oprah or Jerry Springer?

Now about software and service. IBM is using Open Source, Oracle is training ist workforce to Linux. Who needs Sun which tries to force on us its own stuff? Who want slowlaris anyway?

Remember the Boston Tea Party. The asians can start their Asian Tea Party. any day know.

Short of nuking them, America will have to rebuild know how, industries... Who knows? America becoming a poor country, some day some morons from Asia will think smart to oursource in America. And leadership will change again.

A few years back, I was asking myself "will this end up with an asian Tea party". Now, I just ask myself when. I even hope that Europe will evneutally get smart. But we have just voted stupid patent laws for software. :( Empires come and goes. Europe should be smart not to stay the vassal of the states.

Hard wired

[zogger]

--the earliest phones I remember as a kid where hard wired, no jack at all, and they didn't have a dial. Heavy suckers. One of my grandmas had one of the old crank phones, where the mouth piece was on the phone on the wall, you grabbed the single earphone and held it up to your ear, and you cranked it to get the operators attention. We had a normal looking phone though, just no dial. You just picked up the phone, if someone was yakking on it (no one had a dedicated phone, they were all party lines with like 6 houses on each circuit) you asked when they would be done. You picked up a few minutes later, and the operator came on, you gave her-and it always was a her- a number, or just told her a name if it was local. Payphones had dials and cost a nickle. Hardly anyone had a TV yet(we were the first in the neighborhood to get one), but everyone had a big ole tube job radio in the living room and some sort of record player. Those radios threw more heat then the next 10 AMD boxes put together. Smokin! They'd pull the stations though, almost all of them had built in shortwave and commercial AM, there wasn't any FM yet. Not that I remember anyway. I LOVED them things. Had a big ole grundig was my gateway to the world at night, had wires all over my ceiling in my room.

And movies were 25 cents and the only place that had air conditioning. Cokes were a nickle. A new .22 rifle was around 12$. A one speed old heavy bike was about 25$, had enough steel in it to build two harleys I think. Not sure on new car prices back then other than below one grand for a decent one. I know the first house we lived in cost my dad 100$ downpayment, and it was brand spanking new, 3 bedroom ranch with a nice yard in a nice neighborhood. He had a ten year mortgage (I asked him later to find out), which was very common then.

Re:Hard wired

[zogger]

Got my tech enthusiasm from my dad, who was a radio/radar tech in the navy in ww2, then went on to be a mr fixit guy for them things back in civvie life, then went on to work in mainframes. I got to see and help work (some, mostly astanding around getting in the way) on some really old full building sized monsters way back then. He's retired now, but is still a mad garage inventor/tinkerer. Heh, he used to be a "case modder". This is funny. All the old radios and tvs he worked on for people, he would throw a fan in there mounted inside a coffee can, they kept the machines cooler, the tubes went out less often=happier customers, more word of mouth business for him. Another time he built his own electric guitar and amp and had a small band he played in, mostly what is called rockabilly now styled music. My mom jammed on keyboards-a real piano. Heh. They also really encouraged me, were good parents, I learned to read at age 4, that certainly helped.

I'm red-green deficient color blind unfortunately, so back then I really couldn't get into electronics much from color coded wires and resistors, etc, much to my regret to this day. I can tinker some with electronics now, but it's just strictly amatuer hour there. I'm a fair mechanic/carpenter and have had quite an amazing variety of jobs and experiences. To me, life is a great adventure, if you ain't having fun and learning, you'll just shrivel up and get sour. Ya gotta stay physically and mentally active. I always liked computers, but never afforded one until the early 90s when they finally got cheap enough for me to get good used ones. Now it's just a hobby and a great commo tool, an adjunct to radios. Hmm, another thing my old man made was really spiffy, back in the late 60's we had a big backyard pool, the last couple years I was living at home. He and I installed a home brew solar water heating system for that pool, we picked up two more months of good swimming with that thing (up in michigan where I grew up). He was always making stuff like that. Another one I remember he made a capacitive discharge ignition system for those old 59 chevy wagon he had. It was a bear to start in cold weather, he built this thing one weekened and poof, that car just CRANKED and ran no matter how cold it got.

Lots of older folks are tech savvy, remember, all the tech we have today came from guys like my dad back then doing the ground work. 50 years from now you'll look back and go "man, that was some primitive stuff back then in 2004!" HAHAHA!

ipods! We didn't have no steenking ipods! I had a crystal radio I made. The potential between the antenna and the ground wire made the juice to run it. The tuner was wire wrapped on a carboard tube, the ear phone was a rubber eraser with a needle in it and some bits of plastic crap. the whole thing was mounted in a cigar box. Wish I still had it.. hmm Dang if I could remember it better I'd describe it better, but that was most of it AFAIK. It actually worked, with a lot of fussing you could get a couple of stations. Nuthing like that grundig though, I STILL don't have a radio that could pull the stations that old analog monster could.

some stuff was cooler back then, some stuff is cooler now, it's a fair trade off I guess. *Much* less crime, and your buck was worth a lot more, and wicked easy to find good work, and things you could get were mostly still cheap, and quality was excellent. Now you have a lot more variety of *things*, but they don't last as long. Stuff all costs too much, which they keep trying to fix by inflating the dollar, but it still hasn't worked. We got a lot more white collar businessmen/bosses/mamagers/ whatever per human than we used to. And the economy got worse. Politicians still suck. I think they always have sucked, because it's a sucky job probably. Corporations are even more bogus, but they bring us cool stuff, so we are stuck with them, that'll be the fight that lasts forever. We have much better information now, you can go find out about ANYTHING you want to sitting in your living room, this is WAY cool.

Still, no cheap flying cars, and no hot babe amazon robots for your private army.... I'm HOLDING OUT!