The beauty of the Beowulf type solution is that you can tailor the configuration to the problem.
In the past, you had to shell out beaucoup bucks to just get out of the shoot. With a Beowulf strategy, you can make hardware improvements in concert with different software approaches to achieve an optimal price/performance approach.
You may want to check out the Slashdot archives for this interview with Loki's President, Scott Draeker. One answer he gives is particularly germain:
Begin Exerpt
5) Reject ratio (Score:5, Interesting) by FascDot Killed My Pr
I'm assuming that your (current) modus operandi is to call up a company and say "Hey, can we port your game to Linux?" Given that assumption:
1) How many companies have you talked to? 2) What percentage of them rejected the request? 3) Of those that rejected, what were their reasons? (fear of "open source", lack of demand, etc.)
Scott:
I'm going to respond in general terms, as many of your questions apply to ongoing negotiations.
We've spoken to the majority of game companies. When we complete a deal, we turn that into product fairly quickly. Other deal negotiations are ongoing.
The single most important factor for getting a game ported is market size. Everything else is easy to address. If a company feels that they will see sufficient unit sales, then they are quite happy to discuss having a port done.
End Exerpt
Given the company Loki works for has to pay the bill for the port, if they don't believe they can make money at it, it won't happen. In particular, new games draw the highest prices. It is of particular benefit to make sure they rock. So, taking a lesson from the military, it's better to fight on one front at a time. Once they start aging, their prices drop and the Linux port may look viable.
According to this Nasa Document, the cost,at the time, amounted to around $25 Billion -- or around $95 Billion in 1990 dollars.
According to this link, $95 is around $112 in 1998 dollars. Assuming 2% inflation for the last two years, that would put the cost around $116 Billion dollars.
Point of comparison, the Defense Department budget for 2000 is around $290 Billion.
Microsoft always comes to our door, they bring demo units, keep us in touch with their engineers, and certification for our people costs only $2000 each, on-site. Red Hat wants $5,000 a person and we have to fly our people to Durham,[N.C.]."
Red Hat Inc., in Durham, N.C. MicroStandard Distributors, in Redmond, Wash.
Uh, Daher (the guy with the original rant), perhaps the reason Microsoft can come hold your hand, wash your privates, and you don't have to spring for a hotel room is that you are in the same stinking city with M$ and its cast of thousands. Give me a break!
Give it time. Supply and demand will fix the costs and availability. If you need an RHCE as bad as you say, you should be able to afford to pay for one by renting him to your clients.
I, for one, would just as soon see an RHCE maintain a bit more respectibility, if possible, than the CE programs of other systems. If it takes a higher price to do it, so be it.
Another reason why the US opposes strong encryption exports. It's not in the best interest of economic espionage to make it easy to have routine trade secret information encrypted -- it would make it too hard to steal.
Just like human systems, electronic systems have total dose limitations, too.
Imagine the actual mechanisms involved. An energetic charged particle impacts a chip like an extremely tiny bullet - it destroys things along the way. It may take a while for a radiation hardened device sustain enough damage to render it useless because of the scale. But, eventually, enough impacts will drill enough holes (as well as generate cascading particles) so as to change the structure and toast your device.
(Incidentally, the more transistors you pack into a package and the smaller the transistors get, the shorter the lifetime in a radiation hostile environment. Particle "bullets" do more damage and have a greater probability of hitting something you need.)
A long time ago in an industry far away, Borland (aka Inprise) had great desires and plans to grow into a big industry player and prevent Microsoft from dominating the market. From my perspective, it bordered on obsession; Borland acquired and chased partners they felt were necessary to extend their competition front into as many sectors as they felt Microsoft had control.
Microsoft ate their lunch. Borland overexpanded and loss the market for their core business (developer tools) to Microsoft while barely competing in the new sectors.
After hemorrhaging money for a while, they started getting their act together, collapsing back on their original markets and expanding into enterprise services.
In comes Linux, with a glimmer of hope of putting Microsoft in its place. Linux represents a level playing field, ripe for domination by the commercial entity smart enough to get in quickly and build experience and loyalty. It's like starting over for Borland, with a fresh chance to take a wack at Microsoft. But, is the Corel merger really a good business decision, one that will really position Inprise for the long haul, or is it the rebirth of the "gotta get Microsoft" mentality that spawned the overexpansion strategy that hurt them before?
Looks to me like Coates may be seeing some of the latter, which forced his move. Reading his letter, he advocates a much more prudent set of relationships; the sort of play-the-field-while -we're-young approach. Seems like that might be one that manages risk, and the bottom line, better.
Yep, you're right; that is precisely the rationale.
However, a point to consider is why is it necessary to make up the shortfall? Assuming taxes go to pay common services like police, fire, etc., wouldn't the deviation of money from brick and mortar establishments cause those establishments to close? If they close, doesn't that reduce the need for common services, resulting in lower tax requirements (this assumes ecommerce entities are capable of doing business more "compactly")?
When the story was posted, attempting to hit http://www.usb.org challenged you for a password. Cancelling fell through and gave you a bunch of links to various places on their site.
Seems as though they've corrected it now.
There have always been members only information and sections on the site (as I recall); this is nothing new.
About the only thing you'll see is aurora and about the most specific you can get is "in the sky." You will most likely see it North of your position, but, depending on the intensity of the storm, you may see it overhead and south.
When is also a tricky call. Once the ejected matter reaches the earth's magnetic field, it will distort its shape and lead to the interesting stuff. Apart from the basic t=x/v type calculation, you can't get much more specific.
Keep an eye on the GOES magnetometer . When it starts gyrating, it's time to start watching.
By the way, you can't miss it when you see it (I've seen it once - a result of a mass ejected by a flare). It helps to get away from city lights.
Good point and one made in the review: where you come down in this discussion has more to do with whether you assume consciousness is deterministic or nondeterministic.
Isn't the strength of a theory of any kind that it tends to explain observables -- including those that can be explained more simply? A simpler explanation may be more easily or practically applied but it does not make it better or more worthy; it just makes it different.
I'm not terribly surprised about the purchase. Remember the WordPerfect/Borland joint venture which resulted in "Borland Office." Novell bought it and sold it to Corel. There are a lot of historical ties here.
Of course, there are also ideological ties -- the universal "us vs. Microsoft" one. Each of these joint venture players had their market shares eaten away by Microsoft. Ideology follows the people.
Linux represents a huge opportunity for anyone with the flexibility to move fast enough. Microsoft has already shown that they respond too slowly to innovation. The fact that this purchase is happening now says something about what they expect the Linux market to do in the near future and that there is money to be made while Microsoft "wakes up." (Remember Microsoft's initial response to the Internet...)
My problem with this is, in this particular instance, the motion picture industry is exerting pressures on the largely unrelated computer industry by attempting to dictate where their DVD technology can be effectively applied. Linux and others are being effectively snubbed over Windows, etc., not because of technical merit, but because of an attempt to maximize monetary gain on the part of the DCAA.
Except this appears to allow you to create a digitized 3-D surface, rather than just a stereoscopic image.
Theoretically, the output of this camera would allow you to use the image in a rendering application to produce an "actor" in a setting. You can't do that with a disposable camera stereoscopic image without additional work, information, and calculation.
I'm curious what reasoning would cause one to assume you would need to license the CSS algorithm. Since I'm not using the code, it's not a copyright issue. Since it's not protected by patent (as I understand), I don't need to license the technology.
Of course, the real solution is to go back to the drawing board and come up with a better DVD, one that is more difficult to crack, this time. Then provide Linux/FreeBSD software so the Linux community won't be reduced to having to figure it out for themselves. Would any of this really be much of an issue if it weren't for that?
Nope, it wouldn't have. But, they've got no one else to blame but themselves.
When the DVD drives started mainstreaming, Linux users starting asking the obvious question - "Is there a client for Linux?" When the answer came out, Linux developers started doing what they do EVERY STINKING TIME - they try to write one!
It was publicized and talked about. No surprises -- no mystery -- no underhanded ploys -- an entirely predictable response.
SOOO, if you know it's going to happen and you want to keep it under control, you head it off. You write a player and release it in binary form only (precedence: the RealPlayer solution -- also, the 3DFx approach). That pacifies most (but not necessarily all; in which case, it bolsters your piracy arguments).
However, they pulled a Titanic; they said it was unsinkable. They underestimated the capabilities of the Linux crowd. They weakened their case by INTENTIONALLY ignoring a segment of the computing community. They brought this on themselves
Is what they are doing understandable? Yes, in a "I robbed a bank because I was hungry" sort of way.
What's to stop me from taking apart a DVD writer (which I understand currently can'`t do this, but do to density of writing or some such, but eventially they will exist) and hooking it up to a dvd reader, again directly to the electronics.
Absolutely nothing; and that is a critical point here.
Do you mess around with the Sony Playstation any? We'll, Sony engineered their hardware to prevent you from using copied Playstation CD in their systems. As I understand it, Playstation CDs are written with intentional checksum errors that are corrected when you attempt to copy them. The Playstation hardware looks for the errors; if they aren't there, it won't attempt to run the code on the CD.
We'll, didn't take long before some smart folks figured out how to get around it. The process involves soldering in a small microprocessor chip (a PIC) in the right place in the Playstation. The system checks tries to check for the checksum errors and the PIC says "it's cool - just go ahead." It's a $10 modification.
Sony doesn't send a cadre of lawyers to beat up people who do this. First off, they don't have a legal leg to stand on. The people who buy the consoles can do what they want with them and, if they want to solder chips inside - well, that's their right. Sony just makes hardware and sells hardware; you buy it and they are happy.
It's not the same with the DVD folks. The issue to the DVD guys isn't the encryption; the encryption technology is a means to an end. Rather, they want to control who can play DVDs in order to maximize profits. They make their money by licensing the decryption technology - other people make the hardware/software. That's why the Linux community wasn't important to them; it didn't seem like a big revenue source.
The reason they're mad (and sueing) is that they thought they could milk this decryption licensing cow a little while longer than it turned out they could. However, a bunch of smart people managed to shorted the cows life a bit. The DVD encryption folks don't have a leg left.
From the UDP FAQ (http://www.stopspam.org/usenet/faqs/udp.html):
10.What about legal issues? Don't you worry about being sued?
As UUnet (and others) have found, there is no legal requirement for other sites to carry or post their messages. Cancel messages are advisory in nature, and the sites which accept them have to have the ability to process them enabled in their software for them to be effective (the vast majority of sites have them enabled). UUnet threatened legal action when they were UDP'ed in August of 1997, but both the US Justice Department and the FBI (and presumably their own legal department after they consulted them) stated that there had been no laws broken and that they refused to investigate or act. Because none of their own equipment or networks were attacked, compromised, or even affected, there was no legitimate Denial Of Service (DOS) complaint that could be filed. What was happening, in effect, was an organized boycott of their messages. Nothing more, nothing less - and there is nothing illegal in all that. There would also be a horrendous negative public relations wave from actually instituting any legal action. When UUnet threatened, even more people came out in support of that UDP, contributions to legal funds were offered by a large number of people, lawyers volunteered to defend those participating in the UDP, and many ISPs promised to alias UUnet permanently (and work to get others to do the same) the moment they actually instituted legal action.
As another example, there was a rogue canceler, nicknamed "the Kikecanceller" [because his racially inspired cancel message paths all had "!kikecancel" (along with "!spiccancel," "!wopcancel," and others) in them], who was active for a short while. This rogue canceler nuked over 25,000 articles for no legitimate reason before his account got canceled. James M. Hawkins, the supervising agent at the FBI's Tulsa office, stated: "We don't have a case. I don't think we're going to be getting involved in the matter." The local United States Attorney's office was contacted about the cancellations and they replied that no law had been broken. (see the NY Times article about the "Kikecanceller". Note: this site requires you to enter a user name and password to access it, although it is free. There have been no reported instances of spam being sent to any test address that was used to enter the site, so it appears as if this data is only used by that site and not released to anyone who might utilize it for a spamlist).
(b) Companies don't just give money to other companies without a good reason (ie., the $30MM influx); and
(c) One event proceeded the other rather closely,
don't you wonder if there is a cause and effect relationship here? And, if there is, what are the Sun/Novell/etc. guys after that might cause them to press Caldera for closure?
In the first case, any security system can be overcome and the concepts of diminishing returns apply. You can throw a great deal of money at the problem which you pass along to your customers in the form of higher prices or you can suck up the risk and pass the theft losses along to the customers.
What it seems is that it is more cost effective for companies to do the latter than the former. Part of the reason is that a lot of the costs are don't ever hit their balance sheets (the costs due to the impacts on individual customers) though they may see it indirectly because of the loss of that customer base.
You correct in your statement that they are going to charge the amount that makes them the most money. But how do they arrive at those prices? They find out how much it costs to produce (which includes costs due to fraud -- they are real, quatifiable costs) and add a profit. Assuming a reasonably uniform distribution of fraud, everybody has the same hit so all prices reflect the same inflation due to fraud.
Remember, a lot of these costs are going to be passed along (a) to an insurance company who passes along to everyone they insure, or (b) the government, as a loss on their profit/loss statements, which mean reduced taxes which get passed along, sooner or later, to everyone.
Further, price is not the only driver in determining who you are going to shop with or what brand you will buy. You may pay 0.1% more for an item from a particular vendor because he is more responsive, is better organized online, has a larger selection, etc. So, you're support for these reasons are funding his lack of security.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying this is not a boneheaded thing on the part of the vendor nor am I implying the vendor will go through this unscathed. However, IT IS FACT that the theft costs get spread across the entire economy. We'll be paying for it eventually.
Slashdot Mirror
The beauty of the Beowulf type solution is that you can tailor the configuration to the problem.
In the past, you had to shell out beaucoup bucks to just get out of the shoot. With a Beowulf strategy, you can make hardware improvements in concert with different software approaches to achieve an optimal price/performance approach.
You may want to check out the Slashdot archives for this interview with Loki's President, Scott Draeker. One answer he gives is particularly germain:
Begin Exerpt
5) Reject ratio (Score:5, Interesting) by FascDot Killed My Pr
I'm assuming that your (current) modus operandi is to call up a company and say "Hey, can we port your game to Linux?" Given that assumption:
1) How many companies have you talked to? 2) What percentage of them rejected the request? 3) Of those that rejected, what were their reasons? (fear of "open source", lack of demand, etc.)
Scott:
I'm going to respond in general terms, as many of your questions apply to ongoing negotiations.
We've spoken to the majority of game companies. When we complete a deal, we turn that into product fairly quickly. Other deal negotiations are ongoing.
The single most important factor for getting a game ported is market size. Everything else is easy to address. If a company feels that they will see sufficient unit sales, then they are quite happy to discuss having a port done.
End Exerpt
Given the company Loki works for has to pay the bill for the port, if they don't believe they can make money at it, it won't happen. In particular, new games draw the highest prices. It is of particular benefit to make sure they rock. So, taking a lesson from the military, it's better to fight on one front at a time. Once they start aging, their prices drop and the Linux port may look viable.
According to this Nasa Document, the cost ,at the time, amounted to around $25 Billion -- or around $95 Billion in 1990 dollars.
According to this link, $95 is around $112 in 1998 dollars. Assuming 2% inflation for the last two years, that would put the cost around $116 Billion dollars.
Point of comparison, the Defense Department budget for 2000 is around $290 Billion.
Microsoft always comes to our door, they bring demo units, keep us in touch with their engineers, and certification for our people costs only $2000 each, on-site. Red Hat wants $5,000 a person and we have to fly our people to Durham,[N.C.]."
Red Hat Inc., in Durham, N.C.
MicroStandard Distributors, in Redmond, Wash.
Uh, Daher (the guy with the original rant), perhaps the reason Microsoft can come hold your hand, wash your privates, and you don't have to spring for a hotel room is that you are in the same stinking city with M$ and its cast of thousands. Give me a break!
Give it time. Supply and demand will fix the costs and availability. If you need an RHCE as bad as you say, you should be able to afford to pay for one by renting him to your clients.
I, for one, would just as soon see an RHCE maintain a bit more respectibility, if possible, than the CE programs of other systems. If it takes a higher price to do it, so be it.
Another reason why the US opposes strong encryption exports. It's not in the best interest of economic espionage to make it easy to have routine trade secret information encrypted -- it would make it too hard to steal.
Just like human systems, electronic systems have total dose limitations, too.
Imagine the actual mechanisms involved. An energetic charged particle impacts a chip like an extremely tiny bullet - it destroys things along the way. It may take a while for a radiation hardened device sustain enough damage to render it useless because of the scale. But, eventually, enough impacts will drill enough holes (as well as generate cascading particles) so as to change the structure and toast your device.
(Incidentally, the more transistors you pack into a package and the smaller the transistors get, the shorter the lifetime in a radiation hostile environment. Particle "bullets" do more damage and have a greater probability of hitting something you need.)
A long time ago in an industry far away, Borland (aka Inprise) had great desires and plans to grow into a big industry player and prevent Microsoft from dominating the market. From my perspective, it bordered on obsession; Borland acquired and chased partners they felt were necessary to extend their competition front into as many sectors as they felt Microsoft had control.
Microsoft ate their lunch. Borland overexpanded and loss the market for their core business (developer tools) to Microsoft while barely competing in the new sectors.
After hemorrhaging money for a while, they started getting their act together, collapsing back on their original markets and expanding into enterprise services.
In comes Linux, with a glimmer of hope of putting Microsoft in its place. Linux represents a level playing field, ripe for domination by the commercial entity smart enough to get in quickly and build experience and loyalty. It's like starting over for Borland, with a fresh chance to take a wack at Microsoft. But, is the Corel merger really a good business decision, one that will really position Inprise for the long haul, or is it the rebirth of the "gotta get Microsoft" mentality that spawned the overexpansion strategy that hurt them before?
Looks to me like Coates may be seeing some of the latter, which forced his move. Reading his letter, he advocates a much more prudent set of relationships; the sort of play-the-field-while -we're-young approach. Seems like that might be one that manages risk, and the bottom line, better.
IMHO, this bears a striking resemblence to the Ramsey Electronics raid - guilt by association.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Yep, you're right; that is precisely the rationale.
However, a point to consider is why is it necessary to make up the shortfall? Assuming taxes go to pay common services like police, fire, etc., wouldn't the deviation of money from brick and mortar establishments cause those establishments to close? If they close, doesn't that reduce the need for common services, resulting in lower tax requirements (this assumes ecommerce entities are capable of doing business more "compactly")?
Sorry -- I buggered up. Didn't read the link.
You are quite correct.
You missed the point of contention.
When the story was posted, attempting to hit http://www.usb.org challenged you for a password. Cancelling fell through and gave you a bunch of links to various places on their site.
Seems as though they've corrected it now.
There have always been members only information and sections on the site (as I recall); this is nothing new.
Though not entirely discounting the assertions of the paranoid, it honestly looks like somebody just buggered up their web site unintentionally.
Anybody actually *contacted* them?
A good plot on the SESC page to watch is the GOES magnetometer .
When this starts gyrating, it's time to look.
About the only thing you'll see is aurora and about the most specific you can get is "in the sky." You will most likely see it North of your position, but, depending on the intensity of the storm, you may see it overhead and south.
When is also a tricky call. Once the ejected matter reaches the earth's magnetic field, it will distort its shape and lead to the interesting stuff. Apart from the basic t=x/v type calculation, you can't get much more specific.
Keep an eye on the GOES magnetometer . When it starts gyrating, it's time to start watching.
By the way, you can't miss it when you see it (I've seen it once - a result of a mass ejected by a flare). It helps to get away from city lights.
Good point and one made in the review: where you come down in this discussion has more to do with whether you assume consciousness is deterministic or nondeterministic.
Isn't the strength of a theory of any kind that it tends to explain observables -- including those that can be explained more simply? A simpler explanation may be more easily or practically applied but it does not make it better or more worthy; it just makes it different.
I'm not terribly surprised about the purchase. Remember the WordPerfect/Borland joint venture which resulted in "Borland Office." Novell bought it and sold it to Corel. There are a lot of historical ties here.
...)
Of course, there are also ideological ties -- the universal "us vs. Microsoft" one. Each of these joint venture players had their market shares eaten away by Microsoft. Ideology follows the people.
Linux represents a huge opportunity for anyone with the flexibility to move fast enough. Microsoft has already shown that they respond too slowly to innovation. The fact that this purchase is happening now says something about what they expect the Linux market to do in the near future and that there is money to be made while Microsoft "wakes up." (Remember Microsoft's initial response to the Internet
My problem with this is, in this particular instance, the motion picture industry is exerting pressures on the largely unrelated computer industry by attempting to dictate where their DVD technology can be effectively applied. Linux and others are being effectively snubbed over Windows, etc., not because of technical merit, but because of an attempt to maximize monetary gain on the part of the DCAA.
A plan worthy of the best strategist at M$!
Except this appears to allow you to create a digitized 3-D surface, rather than just a stereoscopic image.
Theoretically, the output of this camera would allow you to use the image in a rendering application to produce an "actor" in a setting. You can't do that with a disposable camera stereoscopic image without additional work, information, and calculation.
Interesting observation.
I'm curious what reasoning would cause one to assume you would need to license the CSS algorithm. Since I'm not using the code, it's not a copyright issue. Since it's not protected by patent (as I understand), I don't need to license the technology.
Of course, the real solution is to go back to the drawing board and come up with a better DVD, one that is more difficult to crack, this time. Then provide Linux/FreeBSD software so the Linux community won't be reduced to having to figure it out for themselves. Would any of this really be much of an issue if it weren't for that?
Nope, it wouldn't have. But, they've got no one else to blame but themselves.
When the DVD drives started mainstreaming, Linux users starting asking the obvious question - "Is there a client for Linux?" When the answer came out, Linux developers started doing what they do EVERY STINKING TIME - they try to write one!
It was publicized and talked about. No surprises -- no mystery -- no underhanded ploys -- an entirely predictable response.
SOOO, if you know it's going to happen and you want to keep it under control, you head it off. You write a player and release it in binary form only (precedence: the RealPlayer solution -- also, the 3DFx approach). That pacifies most (but not necessarily all; in which case, it bolsters your piracy arguments).
However, they pulled a Titanic; they said it was unsinkable. They underestimated the capabilities of the Linux crowd. They weakened their case by INTENTIONALLY ignoring a segment of the computing community. They brought this on themselves
Is what they are doing understandable? Yes, in a "I robbed a bank because I was hungry" sort of way.
Does it mean what they are doing is right? NO
What's to stop me from taking apart a DVD writer (which I understand currently can'`t do this, but do to density of writing or some such, but eventially they will exist) and hooking it up to a dvd reader, again directly to the electronics.
Absolutely nothing; and that is a critical point here.
Do you mess around with the Sony Playstation any? We'll, Sony engineered their hardware to prevent you from using copied Playstation CD in their systems. As I understand it, Playstation CDs are written with intentional checksum errors that are corrected when you attempt to copy them. The Playstation hardware looks for the errors; if they aren't there, it won't attempt to run the code on the CD.
We'll, didn't take long before some smart folks figured out how to get around it. The process involves soldering in a small microprocessor chip (a PIC) in the right place in the Playstation. The system checks tries to check for the checksum errors and the PIC says "it's cool - just go ahead." It's a $10 modification.
Sony doesn't send a cadre of lawyers to beat up people who do this. First off, they don't have a legal leg to stand on. The people who buy the consoles can do what they want with them and, if they want to solder chips inside - well, that's their right. Sony just makes hardware and sells hardware; you buy it and they are happy.
It's not the same with the DVD folks. The issue to the DVD guys isn't the encryption; the encryption technology is a means to an end. Rather, they want to control who can play DVDs in order to maximize profits. They make their money by licensing the decryption technology - other people make the hardware/software. That's why the Linux community wasn't important to them; it didn't seem like a big revenue source.
The reason they're mad (and sueing) is that they thought they could milk this decryption licensing cow a little while longer than it turned out they could. However, a bunch of smart people managed to shorted the cows life a bit. The DVD encryption folks don't have a leg left.
From the UDP FAQ (http://www.stopspam.org/usenet/faqs/udp.html):
10.What about legal issues? Don't you worry about being sued?
As UUnet (and others) have found, there is no legal requirement for other sites to carry or post their messages. Cancel messages are advisory in nature, and the sites which accept them have to have the ability to process them enabled in their software for them to be effective (the vast majority of sites have them enabled). UUnet threatened legal action when they were UDP'ed in August of 1997, but both the US Justice Department and the FBI (and presumably their own legal department after they consulted them) stated that there had been no laws broken and that they refused to investigate or act. Because none of their own equipment or networks were attacked, compromised, or even affected, there was no legitimate Denial Of Service (DOS) complaint that could be filed. What was happening, in effect, was an organized boycott of their messages. Nothing more, nothing less - and there is nothing illegal in all that. There would also be a horrendous negative public relations wave from actually instituting any legal action. When UUnet threatened, even more people came out in support of that UDP, contributions to legal funds were offered by a large number of people, lawyers volunteered to defend those participating in the UDP, and many ISPs promised to alias UUnet permanently (and work to get others to do the same) the moment they actually instituted legal action.
As another example, there was a rogue canceler, nicknamed "the Kikecanceller" [because his racially inspired cancel message paths all had "!kikecancel" (along with "!spiccancel," "!wopcancel," and others) in them], who was active for a short while. This rogue canceler nuked over 25,000 articles for no legitimate reason before his account got canceled. James M. Hawkins, the supervising agent at the FBI's Tulsa office, stated: "We don't have a case. I don't think we're going to be getting involved in the matter." The local United States Attorney's office was contacted about the cancellations and they replied that no law had been broken. (see the NY Times article about the "Kikecanceller". Note: this site requires you to enter a user name and password to access it, although it is free. There have been no reported instances of spam being sent to any test address that was used to enter the site, so it appears as if this data is only used by that site and not released to anyone who might utilize it for a spamlist).
Given that:
(a) Settlements usually take a while to work out;
(b) Companies don't just give money to other companies without a good reason (ie., the $30MM influx); and
(c) One event proceeded the other rather closely,
don't you wonder if there is a cause and effect relationship here? And, if there is, what are the Sun/Novell/etc. guys after that might cause them to press Caldera for closure?
In the first case, any security system can be overcome and the concepts of diminishing returns apply. You can throw a great deal of money at the problem which you pass along to your customers in the form of higher prices or you can suck up the risk and pass the theft losses along to the customers.
What it seems is that it is more cost effective for companies to do the latter than the former. Part of the reason is that a lot of the costs are don't ever hit their balance sheets (the costs due to the impacts on individual customers) though they may see it indirectly because of the loss of that customer base.
You correct in your statement that they are going to charge the amount that makes them the most money. But how do they arrive at those prices? They find out how much it costs to produce (which includes costs due to fraud -- they are real, quatifiable costs) and add a profit. Assuming a reasonably uniform distribution of fraud, everybody has the same hit so all prices reflect the same inflation due to fraud.
Remember, a lot of these costs are going to be passed along (a) to an insurance company who passes along to everyone they insure, or (b) the government, as a loss on their profit/loss statements, which mean reduced taxes which get passed along, sooner or later, to everyone.
Further, price is not the only driver in determining who you are going to shop with or what brand you will buy. You may pay 0.1% more for an item from a particular vendor because he is more responsive, is better organized online, has a larger selection, etc. So, you're support for these reasons are funding his lack of security.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying this is not a boneheaded thing on the part of the vendor nor am I implying the vendor will go through this unscathed. However, IT IS FACT that the theft costs get spread across the entire economy. We'll be paying for it eventually.