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Bruce Schneier Weighs in on IT Lock-in Strategies
dhavleak writes "Wired has an article from Bruce Schneier on the intersection of security technologies and vendor lock-ins in IT. 'With enough lock-in, a company can protect its market share even as it reduces customer service, raises prices, refuses to innovate and otherwise abuses its customer base. It should be no surprise that this sounds like pretty much every experience you've had with IT companies: Once the industry discovered lock-in, everyone started figuring out how to get as much of it as they can.'"
Don't stop at the processor level. The fundamental laws of physics already contain signs of corporate lock-in. The No-cloning feature of quantum mechanics clearly is a sign of DRM built into the fundamental laws of the universe. And the inner workings of about everything we use is tied to the exact laws of the universe we are in. Therefore you have to start at the very beginning: First build your own universe!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I really don't think you should be talking about Bruce Schneier like that when you clearly know nothing about the man. For example, did you know that Bruce Schneier once decrypted a box of Alpha Bits? Or that he knows the state of Schroedinger's cat? It's true!
Per the article, sure, you can switch to a Pepsi in a second if you don't like the Coke, but both Pepsi and Coke spend *enormous* amounts of money to suggest that switching to the competitor's product will make you less desirable to women, less success at your job, etc. That's what advertising is all about, trying to get you to lock *yourself* in, willingly, to a single product.
But I digress...
Everybody dreams of being Ma Bell, where even putting a plastic cone on a headset could "damage the network". A lot of companies have had their turn too. We all think of Microsoft as being the king of lock-in, but for my money, it would still be IBM, where their mainframes and mid-range machines were so locked down that you had to get approval to install *anything*. At least with a PC or even a Mac, you can install another OS and you're free and clear. With IBM equipment, they could shut you down remotely if you missed a single "usage" payment (which was calculated *by* *the* *processor* *cycle*!!).
I cannot think of a single company that wouldn't want total lock-in of its users, regardless of industry. Some are just more capable of doing it than others.
I built my own universe once, but the startup Bang really hosed up my wife's microwave.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.