Re:This IS old-fashioned fun...
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PDAs For Kids
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· Score: 1
You're absolutely right, and that's one of many reasons why I don't own a television - I strongly encourage them to do lots of active things (however, I live in the Seattle area, so playing outside is only an option for about 3 months out of the year:-P). But, since they're already transfixed by computers (or anything that beeps, blinks, and takes batteries), I figure that a Pixter is one of the best toys of its type: it requires using a stylus (i.e. writing), which is a much more age-appropriate skill than typing or mouse-clicking. That's what I was referring to above.
This IS old-fashioned fun...
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PDAs For Kids
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· Score: 5, Interesting
It's just a MagnaDoodle(TM) that allows you to save pictures to your PC. As for geekifying kids, my own (ages 8, 5, 3 and 1) are already attached to the computer. One of these gizmos would be a clever way to actually give them some "old-fashioned" fun: say "hey, it's your very own computer!" when all they're really doing is drawing. Sure, it costs more than pencil and paper, but my kids probably go through $10 of paper, crayons, coloring books and markers a month, and that's not even counting the time and cost of cleaning off the 3-year-old's "artwork" from our apartment walls! I'd rather give him a stylus than a pencil any day - less damage that way...
(He's also already trashed the MagnaDoodle I got him for Christmas -- it seems that with enough use, the "writing surface" becomes magnetized, so it doesn't "wipe clean" any more... Another reason why the digital version is better than the analog one...)
As an aside, did you really mean to suggest that the best thing for children aged 4+ is to "give" them "members of the opposite sex" for "old-fashioned fun", or was that just some odd Freudian slip?;-)
...and more time thinking about basic information security. Nobody would bother to actually cut off a finger to commit identity theft: the whole goal of identify theft is to acquire trusted personal identification and use it for fraudulent purposes without the victim knowing: once he detects the theft, he cancels the accounts and the fun is over. If you hack off his finger, I think he'll notice, and probably call the cops or something...
No, it's much easier to "hack" into the database, or even easier, just bribe some entry-level tech support flunky, no black hat required. Now you've got the ultimate "trusted personal identification", and the theft victim is triply screwed:
He'll have an awfully difficult time convincing his bank that this s00per d00per 007-type system can be cracked so easily. "We think you really DID buy 100 copies of Debbie Does Dallas and you're just too embarrassed to admit it!"
Even if he convinces the bank, he can't exactly get new fingerprints issued. His only option is to have his fingerprint records removed from the bank's records entirely.
Even if he convinces the bank to remove the records, his fingerprints are probably in lots of other databases. As Bruce Schneier points out, biometrics make lousy keys, because even if they're sufficiently random, they're not secret. I've never been arrested, but I did spearhead protests against the Gulf War at my univeristy, so I have no doubt that my fingerprints are on file with the FBI, and probably a few other other.govs as well.
As another poster pointed out, if my Safeway card # gets stolen, they may find out an embarrassingly great deal about my grocery purchases, but if my fingerprint data gets stolen, that's automatically identity theft.
If you come up with a good, original idea, just publish it on any old website (like this one), and submit it to google for archival purposes. Then, if anybody tries to patent it, you can sue to have the patent invalidated due to prior art.
Therein, of course, lies the crux of the problem. You would have to mount the costly legal effort to have the patent invalidated. That's supposed to be the Patent Office's job, but at least here in the USofA, the Patent Office is pitifully negligent when researching prior art. There's a simple reason for that: the PTO is paid to grant patents, not deny them. There's no penalty for a patent investigator (or a patent attorney) if a patent is later invalidated.
Hmmm, a hefty fine for invalidated patents could be a simple, market-oriented way to reduce the number of "bad" patents? Any thoughts?
Ooh, ooh, I think I'll file a patent on "A Method For Reducing The Rate Of Invalidated Patents" and make a million bucks!
Sorry, I guess I was unclear. That's the 65th percentile, i.e. you get paid better than 65% of the other people in your area doing the same job. Before it was at the 50th percentile, i.e. your pay was exactly average.
drfrank is correct - the base pay was increased to 65% of the (local prevailing) industry wage, partly to compensate for the huge loss in value of the options. There was also a 25% additional bonus paid to their employees in Silicon Valley, but that has since been scaled back (now that they're not losing their Bay Area employees to dot-coms.)
As I said, if I'm not mistaken, the majority of MS shares are still held by MS officers. Keeping the money in MS instead of distributing it to shareholders allows them to avoid a huge amount of taxes, so huge a tax break that at least one SEC probe and one shareholder lawsuit are challenging this practice.
This is not an "inopportune" time; this is exactly the time when MS needs to expand into other businesses. (See my other post to this article.) Desktop OS revenues are flat; nobody seems in any hurry to upgrade Office versions; and MSN TV hasn't done very well. They need to find something to satisfy their legal responsibility to their shareholders (note that this primarily still means Bill & Steve & Jim.)
As for the XBox: you're absolutely right that it's an "investment for the future", but perhaps not in the way you meant. The XBox's real purpose is clearly visible if you dig a bit deeper into their discussions with ISVs (i.e. game developers). It's called XBox.NET, in other words, a $10 or $20/month online gaming subscription service. The XBox is clearly targeted to the 18-35 crowd, plus it's the only console that currently ships with an ethernet port built-in.
That's where MS plans to make its money: if it sells you one game (e.g. Halo) plus 6 months of XBOX.NET at say $20/month, they make back that $125 subsidy for the hardware, then even if they never sell you another game!
And don't expect them to run out of money any time soon. Right now, they anticipate losing about $2,000,000,000 before they start breaking even on the XBox, but they have about $37,000,000,000 in the bank. According to SteveB, even with 40,000 employees (up from 30,000 just 2 years ago), they have enough money in the bank to run the company another 5 YEARS without another dime of revenue...
Microsoft understands that it needs to sell something that users are willing to pay $10 or $20 a month for. If an online calendar/address book/data storage/wallet (which is all that.Net My Services ever was) doesn't convince people to hand over the money, they'll find something that will.
Revenue for desktop operating systems is leveling out, so they are looking for the next cash cow. Right now, they appear a little disorganized because they're trying several things at once: Web Services, MSN TV, Pocket PC, and X-Box, to name a few. In particular, they're moving aggressively to expand the MSN brand (by partnering with / buying up ISPs.)
At any rate, Hailstorm is far from gone:.Net My Services may be scaled back, but Passport is becoming more and more visible: Monster and EBay both have it as an option, for example.
I'm not terribly surprised that the Windows Update site was hacked; I know Microsoft's security holes perhaps a bit too well (see my other post to this story.) What I meant was that to my knowledge, Windows Update has never been "taken over" in the manner described in the article.
I was temping at Microsoft when NIMDA hit (flame me later.) The entire campus was more or less out of commission for a few days, and was having difficulty for at least a few weeks after that.
Check out the link regarding a "Warhol Worm". What if somebody wanted to write a virus with a REALLY destructive payload? Starting from a base of 10 million PCs would allow for a previously unheard-of propagation rate. Sounds perilously close to "effective control of the internet" to make.
I don't have any hard data, but I'm going to guess that Kazaa users tend to be more likely than the average PC user to have high-speed, always-on connections; yet they are significantly less concerned than the average PC user about privacy and security (since they don't seem to mind running an app with a known Trojan!). This makes the Kazaa network a far "juicier" target than anything we've seen to date.
In addition, the infrastructure to do a rapid "update" of arbitrary malicious code is already just sitting there, waiting for some black hat to take advantage, no social engineering required (BDE has done that hard bit already.)
Need for Speed isn't installed on 10 million PCs. And, unlike Kazaa (I refuse to type that #$%@ capitalization), it's probably not running more or less 24/7 on a good percentage of those boxes.
True, windowsupdate.microsoft.com is a big fat target too, but at least that was designed primarily with security in mind, and AFAIK it hasn't been hacked yet in the 4 years since it was introduced. Also, Windows Update will NOT install anything without your explicit consent. (Now, as for Windows Media... it says right in the EULA that MS reserves the right to update your codecs without your permission, at the very least...)
I've heard that idea floated a few times - most recently with reference to patching IIS against Code Red. The idea never seems to go anywhere - perhaps the fact that it's illegal has something to do with that...
Coming Soon to a PC near you! - NOT!
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JPEG2000 Coming Soon
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Am I missing the joke - is this some sort of overdue April Fool's joke? Did this story get sent here by Mallett's time machine from last week?
Or did/. just regurgitate somebody's press release?
As far as I can tell with a quick google, nothing has been done with this standard since early 2000 (maybe that's why the standard name hasn't been updated, eh.) I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for widespread adoption any time soon...
It's called "snob appeal"
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PC Prices to Rise?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
What your "clueless" neighbor wanted to you to "bless" was his decision to spend a huge amount of money on a computer merely to demonstrate his commitment to being on the cutting edge. In other words, he wanted you to let him know how L33T he is.
Normally, I wouldn't be so condescending about a newbie, but the fact that he asked you about it, specifically telling you the price, indicates that he was just showing off. It would be kind of like him showing you his brand new Porsche, as he rubs his chin thoughtfully saying, "hmm, do you think I paid too much??"
Meanwhile, I don't think you need to worry too much about the cost of low-end systems being affected, since we l33t coders "know" that building it yourself will always be cheaper, especially since you don't have to pay the Microsoft Tax...;#)
Not according to the article
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PC Prices to Rise?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The phrase "decline in the price of memory" comes from the submitter, not the article. According to the article (and the market), "the cost of some chips has been steadily increasing."
Oddly enough, the article points out that steadily rising component prices may actually encourage some companies (e.g. Hynix) to get back into a market they had recently abandoned, despite shrinking margins. It also mentions that since Dell tends to pass changes in component prices quickly on to customers (for better or, in this case, worse), that it may actually be a competitive disadvantage WRT Compaq or HP, since those companies sell to retail at somewhat fixed prices.
What a strange business - when technical innovation is the driving force in a market, the usual business laws don't seem to apply...
It's programs like these that make some people so queasy about Open Source.
Sure, it's very interesting that Linux has a system interface that's so straightforward that it can be easily manipulated in sort-of-real-time by a simple scripting language, and I'm sure you have to be root to run it, but somehow the fact that somebody's already put together something like this, even just as a proof-of-concept, really makes me less confident about Linux, not more.
Maybe it's just the whole Matrix-like undertones.*
*ObGeekFiction: Actually, the first literary reference that came to my mind was Hiro's "BigBoard" in Snow Crash. (Looks like someone is working on the Metaverse too...)
I'm quite sure that Mr. Disney wouldn't have felt Mickey Mouse needed additional copyright protection, because although "Steamboat Willie" and "Mickey's Christmas Carol" are "merely" copyrighted, "Mickey Mouse" (the icon) is trademarked.
Trademarks don't have expiration dates -- they are valid as long as you actively police them, which Disney (the Co.) does with a zeal that trumps the "(blank) Inside" company any day.
So, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with whether Disney can produce another Mickey Mouse cartoon; it only allows them to keep making money off of "Steamboat Willie" instead of releasing it to the public domain. In other words, the SBCEA's (presumably intended) effect is exactly the opposite of encouraging new creative works; instead, it encourages the milking of existing works for profit as long as possible.
As I said in another comment here, it's not the penalty phase, it's the remedy phase. It may sound very strange, but the purpose of an antitrust suit is not to punish a company, no matter how much we may want to, but to prevent it from abusing its monopoly while still allowing it to conduct business.
That's why Microsoft is playing this game of brinksmanship by saying "oh no, Your Honor, don't do that - it would make Windows(tm) an unsupportable product." They know perfectly well that if they can convince the judge that the proposed remedy would hurt the market for PCs (the "ecosystem" as MS puts it), the judge might throw out that proposal.
The fact that their line of reasoning simply demonstrates that Windows is a poorly designed product, and also directly contradicts their own marketing push with regard to XP Embedded ("It's Modular!!"), doesn't seem to bother them in the slightest. After all, everybody "knows" that Windows is already a support nightmare, yet they keep buying it anyway...
It's been rehashed on/. a thousand times, but some are apparently unclear on the law, so to reiterate:
US antitrust law is a strange beast. First of all, it's not illegal to have a monopoly. That's hardly surprising, since it's essentially the goal of every business to completely dominate its particular market segment. What is illegal is for an established monopoly to use that monopoly power to extend its business into a new market segment, because that would reduce the ability of other competitors to enter that market segment.
To emphasize: the direct purpose of antitrust legislation is to benefit competitors, not consumers. It was taken as an article of faith by the authors of the antitrust legislation that increased competition would provide a benefit to consumers (cf. Adam Smith.)
Thus, the purpose of an antitrust action can't be to harm the illegal monopolist (since that would have the effect of reducing competition), but to provide a "level playing field" -- in other words, remedy whatever the monopolist did to make the field "un-level", and make sure it doesn't happen again. That's why it's called the "remedy" phase and not the "punishment" phase.
Now, the simplest and most effective way to level the field is a "structural" remedy, i.e. break up the monopolist in some way. For a "non-interventionist" (a euphemism for pro-big-business) US Administration (and I mean the previous as well as the current one), breaking up MS would actually have been the best possible remedy, because the only other option is to have continuous, detailed, "interventionist" micromanagement of MS's business practices.
Unfortunately, by all accounts, the DOJ badly mishandled its case. It couldn't even take advantage of Microsoft's, er, "lapses in judgement" (outright fabrications.) A good deal of that may be due to the fact that they chose in the beginning to pursue the wrong target - IE bundling instead of Office lock-in. But at any rate, since the DOJ couldn't convince the courts to apply a structural remedy, right now it looks like they're just going to give up on pursuing any meaningful remedy at all.
So the bundling of ADABAS is even less of a selling point for the non-free StarOffice. So, what's left as a reason for a good little slashdotter to buy it? As I said, certainly not its sort-of-openness. From Java to Solaris to OpenOffice, it seems that Sun, like MS, sees Open Source as just another marketing gimmick. Oh well, stranger gimmicks have worked well in the past - just look at sales for the Sims:-S
That was part of my point; if people want to pay for something so they feel better about it, fine with me, and I do hope SO does well. And yes, Sun owns StarOffice - they bought SO from Star Division, but as I said, I have the impression (correct or not) that they did it primarily so ScottM could thumb his nose at BillG. As far as I can tell, Sun really still doesn't "get" Open Source.
So, some people might buy SO now that it's in a pretty box from Sun, but I'm not particularly interested. Maybe Sun knows their market, or maybe it's just a gimmick.
Think about it: with every product you buy, you're really paying for a service. You don't have to buy a car - you could just purchase the raw materials yourself (or even mine them directly) then design and assemble it into a complete vehicle. I actually know a guy that did this - hand-forged and assembled a complete '42 Dodge (from an "open-source" design, I guess.) What - you don't have that kind of time on your hands, and you'd rather spend $20-30K for the convenience of having somebody else provide that service for you? Fine. But don't say you're not willing to pay a lot for services.
So, your question is really: "How can the programmers make money if they're willing to give their stuff away for free?" Three possibilities:
Stop giving it away for free, or just provide the source under a different license than the GPL; for example, make the software available for free, but you only get the source if you *buy* the product. Of course, then you'll lose the advantage of "many eyeballs", <troll>but hey, who audits all that code anyway?</troll>
Ask for donations. By all accounts, Mandrake and TransGaming are doing reasonably well with this approach. (See my other post below.)
Do the coding, not to get paid directly, but in order to increase your chances of getting a better-paying job. There was a very interesting study linked a few months ago on/., analyzing the countries and backgrounds of contributors to GNOME. The observation was that a disproportionate percentage of open source contributors are from countries that have developing IT industries, not established ones, so his conclusion was that the coders were contributing in order to develop their skills and establish their reputations.
The last one is the option that can motivate me personally. I'm out of work at the moment (hire me!), so I'm planning on contributing to the Wine and/or Mono projects to boost my marketability. Is that so bad?
The fact that it's not really a direct comparison (because a RH box contains the identical GPL'ed bits to the free downloadable version, and StarOffice is a closed-source version that presumably has some value-add above and beyond the free OpenOffice) only makes your question more intriguing: why do people pay for the RH box when you can get it for free?
Now, I've never bought a RedHat box, but I have bought a Mandrake box. Let's look at what I get by buying that Mandrake box: - All the same free bits as the downloadable version, but on a nice high-quality CD - Some additional commercial applications / demos - A nicely printed and bound manual (invaluable for when you're installing on a clean machine - you can't exactly go online for help during the install!) - A technical support number - The satisfaction of putting your money where your mouth is, by directly supporting a worthy effort
Now, let's look at what I might get by buying the StarOffice box: - Mostly the same bits as the freely downloadable version, but possibly with some changes that might have improved it, or might have added some bugs - I can't know for sure, since it's closed-source - Possibly some more filters or fonts or something, but I can't tell for sure, since it's closed-source - the ADABAS database, which may or may not be more or less functional than (say) MySQL, but I can't tell for sure, since it's closed-source - A nicely printed and bound manual, which isn't quite as indispensable during the install as Mandrake's - A technical support number (?) - A vague sense of guilt that somehow Sun is freeloading off the efforts of the OpenOffice team to make a quick buck and advance its vendetta against MS.
I think you can see that Mandrake's (and by extension, Red Hat's) "value proposition" (i.e what they say you'll get if you buy the product) is much clearer than Sun's.
That being said, I still think that Sun charging is a boon for StarOffice. Why? Because, for better or worse, many (if not most) people consider something that you pay for is necessarily more valuable than something you get for free. I'm not exactly sure why that is, but it's not entirely unreasonable - there are a number of consumer laws (IANAL&PWNB) that automatically provide certain guarantees of quality for items that you purchase, regardless of any included slip of paper that claims "as is, no warranty, etc. etc."
But even more to the point (and still on-topic!), as ESR and RMS actually agree, the main "value proposition" in Open Source isn't free (gratis) versus $$, it's open versus closed, or as RMS would say, free vs. non-free. To use one of OSS's more common examples, if I had the choice between two otherwise identical vehicles, but one had the hood welded shut, I wouldn't buy the "closed-engine" version unless it were significantly cheaper. That holds even though I'm completely mechanically disinclined, and don't have even the remotest interest in tinkering with a vehicle! Why? Because I have a brother-in-law who's very good with cars, and I know I can ask for his help if I need it. Let me make the analogy more clear: as far as vehicles go, "closed-source" is actually a negative value for me, even if I have no real interest in ever looking at the "source"; just having that option is enough.
All that said, I'm probably going to "buy" StarOffice after all -- I'm going to join the Mandrake Silver Club, even though I just downloaded and burned the 8.2 ISO's, and currently, the only tangible difference between the Standard membership and the Silver membership is the ability to download SO6. I haven't done it yet, since I'm out of work and broke at the moment (shameless self-promotion), but I will in the next month or so. Why? Primarily because of that last item in the checklist above; I want to put my money where my mouth is and support worthy software development. How about you?
Thanks, PhysicsGenius, you made my day. I laughed myself hoarse, especially reading the posters who thought you were serious! Sorry I don't have mod points.
"the cross-platform standardizations let me easily port my work for colleagues" - BWAAAHAAAHAAAA!!!!!
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You're absolutely right, and that's one of many reasons why I don't own a television - I strongly encourage them to do lots of active things (however, I live in the Seattle area, so playing outside is only an option for about 3 months out of the year :-P). But, since they're already transfixed by computers (or anything that beeps, blinks, and takes batteries), I figure that a Pixter is one of the best toys of its type: it requires using a stylus (i.e. writing), which is a much more age-appropriate skill than typing or mouse-clicking. That's what I was referring to above.
It's just a MagnaDoodle(TM) that allows you to save pictures to your PC. As for geekifying kids, my own (ages 8, 5, 3 and 1) are already attached to the computer. One of these gizmos would be a clever way to actually give them some "old-fashioned" fun: say "hey, it's your very own computer!" when all they're really doing is drawing. Sure, it costs more than pencil and paper, but my kids probably go through $10 of paper, crayons, coloring books and markers a month, and that's not even counting the time and cost of cleaning off the 3-year-old's "artwork" from our apartment walls! I'd rather give him a stylus than a pencil any day - less damage that way...
;-)
(He's also already trashed the MagnaDoodle I got him for Christmas -- it seems that with enough use, the "writing surface" becomes magnetized, so it doesn't "wipe clean" any more... Another reason why the digital version is better than the analog one...)
As an aside, did you really mean to suggest that the best thing for children aged 4+ is to "give" them "members of the opposite sex" for "old-fashioned fun", or was that just some odd Freudian slip?
No, it's much easier to "hack" into the database, or even easier, just bribe some entry-level tech support flunky, no black hat required. Now you've got the ultimate "trusted personal identification", and the theft victim is triply screwed:
As another poster pointed out, if my Safeway card # gets stolen, they may find out an embarrassingly great deal about my grocery purchases, but if my fingerprint data gets stolen, that's automatically identity theft.
It's called "the public domain."
If you come up with a good, original idea, just publish it on any old website (like this one), and submit it to google for archival purposes. Then, if anybody tries to patent it, you can sue to have the patent invalidated due to prior art.
Therein, of course, lies the crux of the problem. You would have to mount the costly legal effort to have the patent invalidated. That's supposed to be the Patent Office's job, but at least here in the USofA, the Patent Office is pitifully negligent when researching prior art. There's a simple reason for that: the PTO is paid to grant patents, not deny them. There's no penalty for a patent investigator (or a patent attorney) if a patent is later invalidated.
Hmmm, a hefty fine for invalidated patents could be a simple, market-oriented way to reduce the number of "bad" patents? Any thoughts?
Ooh, ooh, I think I'll file a patent on "A Method For Reducing The Rate Of Invalidated Patents" and make a million bucks!
Sorry, I guess I was unclear. That's the 65th percentile, i.e. you get paid better than 65% of the other people in your area doing the same job. Before it was at the 50th percentile, i.e. your pay was exactly average.
drfrank is correct - the base pay was increased to 65% of the (local prevailing) industry wage, partly to compensate for the huge loss in value of the options. There was also a 25% additional bonus paid to their employees in Silicon Valley, but that has since been scaled back (now that they're not losing their Bay Area employees to dot-coms.)
As I said, if I'm not mistaken, the majority of MS shares are still held by MS officers. Keeping the money in MS instead of distributing it to shareholders allows them to avoid a huge amount of taxes, so huge a tax break that at least one SEC probe and one shareholder lawsuit are challenging this practice.
This is not an "inopportune" time; this is exactly the time when MS needs to expand into other businesses. (See my other post to this article.) Desktop OS revenues are flat; nobody seems in any hurry to upgrade Office versions; and MSN TV hasn't done very well. They need to find something to satisfy their legal responsibility to their shareholders (note that this primarily still means Bill & Steve & Jim.)
As for the XBox: you're absolutely right that it's an "investment for the future", but perhaps not in the way you meant. The XBox's real purpose is clearly visible if you dig a bit deeper into their discussions with ISVs (i.e. game developers). It's called XBox.NET, in other words, a $10 or $20/month online gaming subscription service. The XBox is clearly targeted to the 18-35 crowd, plus it's the only console that currently ships with an ethernet port built-in.
That's where MS plans to make its money: if it sells you one game (e.g. Halo) plus 6 months of XBOX.NET at say $20/month, they make back that $125 subsidy for the hardware, then even if they never sell you another game!
And don't expect them to run out of money any time soon. Right now, they anticipate losing about $2,000,000,000 before they start breaking even on the XBox, but they have about $37,000,000,000 in the bank. According to SteveB, even with 40,000 employees (up from 30,000 just 2 years ago), they have enough money in the bank to run the company another 5 YEARS without another dime of revenue...
Microsoft understands that it needs to sell something that users are willing to pay $10 or $20 a month for. If an online calendar/address book/data storage/wallet (which is all that .Net My Services ever was) doesn't convince people to hand over the money, they'll find something that will.
.Net My Services may be scaled back, but Passport is becoming more and more visible: Monster and EBay both have it as an option, for example.
Revenue for desktop operating systems is leveling out, so they are looking for the next cash cow. Right now, they appear a little disorganized because they're trying several things at once: Web Services, MSN TV, Pocket PC, and X-Box, to name a few. In particular, they're moving aggressively to expand the MSN brand (by partnering with / buying up ISPs.)
At any rate, Hailstorm is far from gone:
I'm not terribly surprised that the Windows Update site was hacked; I know Microsoft's security holes perhaps a bit too well (see my other post to this story.) What I meant was that to my knowledge, Windows Update has never been "taken over" in the manner described in the article.
Need for Speed isn't installed on 10 million PCs. And, unlike Kazaa (I refuse to type that #$%@ capitalization), it's probably not running more or less 24/7 on a good percentage of those boxes.
True, windowsupdate.microsoft.com is a big fat target too, but at least that was designed primarily with security in mind, and AFAIK it hasn't been hacked yet in the 4 years since it was introduced. Also, Windows Update will NOT install anything without your explicit consent. (Now, as for Windows Media... it says right in the EULA that MS reserves the right to update your codecs without your permission, at the very least...)
I've heard that idea floated a few times - most recently with reference to patching IIS against Code Red. The idea never seems to go anywhere - perhaps the fact that it's illegal has something to do with that...
Am I missing the joke - is this some sort of overdue April Fool's joke? Did this story get sent here by Mallett's time machine from last week?
/. just regurgitate somebody's press release?
Or did
As far as I can tell with a quick google, nothing has been done with this standard since early 2000 (maybe that's why the standard name hasn't been updated, eh.) I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for widespread adoption any time soon...
What your "clueless" neighbor wanted to you to "bless" was his decision to spend a huge amount of money on a computer merely to demonstrate his commitment to being on the cutting edge. In other words, he wanted you to let him know how L33T he is.
;#)
Normally, I wouldn't be so condescending about a newbie, but the fact that he asked you about it, specifically telling you the price, indicates that he was just showing off. It would be kind of like him showing you his brand new Porsche, as he rubs his chin thoughtfully saying, "hmm, do you think I paid too much??"
Meanwhile, I don't think you need to worry too much about the cost of low-end systems being affected, since we l33t coders "know" that building it yourself will always be cheaper, especially since you don't have to pay the Microsoft Tax...
The phrase "decline in the price of memory" comes from the submitter, not the article. According to the article (and the market), "the cost of some chips has been steadily increasing."
Oddly enough, the article points out that steadily rising component prices may actually encourage some companies (e.g. Hynix) to get back into a market they had recently abandoned, despite shrinking margins. It also mentions that since Dell tends to pass changes in component prices quickly on to customers (for better or, in this case, worse), that it may actually be a competitive disadvantage WRT Compaq or HP, since those companies sell to retail at somewhat fixed prices.
What a strange business - when technical innovation is the driving force in a market, the usual business laws don't seem to apply...
It's programs like these that make some people so queasy about Open Source.
Sure, it's very interesting that Linux has a system interface that's so straightforward that it can be easily manipulated in sort-of-real-time by a simple scripting language, and I'm sure you have to be root to run it, but somehow the fact that somebody's already put together something like this, even just as a proof-of-concept, really makes me less confident about Linux, not more.
Maybe it's just the whole Matrix-like undertones.*
*ObGeekFiction: Actually, the first literary reference that came to my mind was Hiro's "BigBoard" in Snow Crash. (Looks like someone is working on the Metaverse too...)
I'm quite sure that Mr. Disney wouldn't have felt Mickey Mouse needed additional copyright protection, because although "Steamboat Willie" and "Mickey's Christmas Carol" are "merely" copyrighted, "Mickey Mouse" (the icon) is trademarked.
Trademarks don't have expiration dates -- they are valid as long as you actively police them, which Disney (the Co.) does with a zeal that trumps the "(blank) Inside" company any day.
So, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with whether Disney can produce another Mickey Mouse cartoon; it only allows them to keep making money off of "Steamboat Willie" instead of releasing it to the public domain. In other words, the SBCEA's (presumably intended) effect is exactly the opposite of encouraging new creative works; instead, it encourages the milking of existing works for profit as long as possible.
As I said in another comment here, it's not the penalty phase, it's the remedy phase. It may sound very strange, but the purpose of an antitrust suit is not to punish a company, no matter how much we may want to, but to prevent it from abusing its monopoly while still allowing it to conduct business.
That's why Microsoft is playing this game of brinksmanship by saying "oh no, Your Honor, don't do that - it would make Windows(tm) an unsupportable product." They know perfectly well that if they can convince the judge that the proposed remedy would hurt the market for PCs (the "ecosystem" as MS puts it), the judge might throw out that proposal.
The fact that their line of reasoning simply demonstrates that Windows is a poorly designed product, and also directly contradicts their own marketing push with regard to XP Embedded ("It's Modular!!"), doesn't seem to bother them in the slightest. After all, everybody "knows" that Windows is already a support nightmare, yet they keep buying it anyway...
It's been rehashed on /. a thousand times, but some are apparently unclear on the law, so to reiterate:
US antitrust law is a strange beast. First of all, it's not illegal to have a monopoly. That's hardly surprising, since it's essentially the goal of every business to completely dominate its particular market segment. What is illegal is for an established monopoly to use that monopoly power to extend its business into a new market segment, because that would reduce the ability of other competitors to enter that market segment.
To emphasize: the direct purpose of antitrust legislation is to benefit competitors, not consumers. It was taken as an article of faith by the authors of the antitrust legislation that increased competition would provide a benefit to consumers (cf. Adam Smith.)
Thus, the purpose of an antitrust action can't be to harm the illegal monopolist (since that would have the effect of reducing competition), but to provide a "level playing field" -- in other words, remedy whatever the monopolist did to make the field "un-level", and make sure it doesn't happen again. That's why it's called the "remedy" phase and not the "punishment" phase.
Now, the simplest and most effective way to level the field is a "structural" remedy, i.e. break up the monopolist in some way. For a "non-interventionist" (a euphemism for pro-big-business) US Administration (and I mean the previous as well as the current one), breaking up MS would actually have been the best possible remedy, because the only other option is to have continuous, detailed, "interventionist" micromanagement of MS's business practices.
Unfortunately, by all accounts, the DOJ badly mishandled its case. It couldn't even take advantage of Microsoft's, er, "lapses in judgement" (outright fabrications.) A good deal of that may be due to the fact that they chose in the beginning to pursue the wrong target - IE bundling instead of Office lock-in. But at any rate, since the DOJ couldn't convince the courts to apply a structural remedy, right now it looks like they're just going to give up on pursuing any meaningful remedy at all.
So the bundling of ADABAS is even less of a selling point for the non-free StarOffice. So, what's left as a reason for a good little slashdotter to buy it? As I said, certainly not its sort-of-openness. From Java to Solaris to OpenOffice, it seems that Sun, like MS, sees Open Source as just another marketing gimmick. Oh well, stranger gimmicks have worked well in the past - just look at sales for the Sims :-S
That was part of my point; if people want to pay for something so they feel better about it, fine with me, and I do hope SO does well. And yes, Sun owns StarOffice - they bought SO from Star Division, but as I said, I have the impression (correct or not) that they did it primarily so ScottM could thumb his nose at BillG. As far as I can tell, Sun really still doesn't "get" Open Source.
So, some people might buy SO now that it's in a pretty box from Sun, but I'm not particularly interested. Maybe Sun knows their market, or maybe it's just a gimmick.
So, your question is really: "How can the programmers make money if they're willing to give their stuff away for free?" Three possibilities:
- Stop giving it away for free, or just provide the source under a different license than the GPL; for example, make the software available for free, but you only get the source if you *buy* the product. Of course, then you'll lose the advantage of "many eyeballs", <troll>but hey, who audits all that code anyway?</troll>
- Ask for donations. By all accounts, Mandrake and TransGaming are doing reasonably well with this approach. (See my other post below.)
- Do the coding, not to get paid directly, but in order to increase your chances of getting a better-paying job. There was a very interesting study linked a few months ago on
/., analyzing the countries and backgrounds of contributors to GNOME. The observation was that a disproportionate percentage of open source contributors are from countries that have developing IT industries, not established ones, so his conclusion was that the coders were contributing in order to develop their skills and establish their reputations.
The last one is the option that can motivate me personally. I'm out of work at the moment (hire me!), so I'm planning on contributing to the Wine and/or Mono projects to boost my marketability. Is that so bad?The fact that it's not really a direct comparison (because a RH box contains the identical GPL'ed bits to the free downloadable version, and StarOffice is a closed-source version that presumably has some value-add above and beyond the free OpenOffice) only makes your question more intriguing: why do people pay for the RH box when you can get it for free?
Now, I've never bought a RedHat box, but I have bought a Mandrake box. Let's look at what I get by buying that Mandrake box:
- All the same free bits as the downloadable version, but on a nice high-quality CD
- Some additional commercial applications / demos
- A nicely printed and bound manual (invaluable for when you're installing on a clean machine - you can't exactly go online for help during the install!)
- A technical support number
- The satisfaction of putting your money where your mouth is, by directly supporting a worthy effort
Now, let's look at what I might get by buying the StarOffice box:
- Mostly the same bits as the freely downloadable version, but possibly with some changes that might have improved it, or might have added some bugs - I can't know for sure, since it's closed-source
- Possibly some more filters or fonts or something, but I can't tell for sure, since it's closed-source
- the ADABAS database, which may or may not be more or less functional than (say) MySQL, but I can't tell for sure, since it's closed-source
- A nicely printed and bound manual, which isn't quite as indispensable during the install as Mandrake's
- A technical support number (?)
- A vague sense of guilt that somehow Sun is freeloading off the efforts of the OpenOffice team to make a quick buck and advance its vendetta against MS.
I think you can see that Mandrake's (and by extension, Red Hat's) "value proposition" (i.e what they say you'll get if you buy the product) is much clearer than Sun's.
That being said, I still think that Sun charging is a boon for StarOffice. Why? Because, for better or worse, many (if not most) people consider something that you pay for is necessarily more valuable than something you get for free. I'm not exactly sure why that is, but it's not entirely unreasonable - there are a number of consumer laws (IANAL&PWNB) that automatically provide certain guarantees of quality for items that you purchase, regardless of any included slip of paper that claims "as is, no warranty, etc. etc."
But even more to the point (and still on-topic!), as ESR and RMS actually agree, the main "value proposition" in Open Source isn't free (gratis) versus $$, it's open versus closed, or as RMS would say, free vs. non-free. To use one of OSS's more common examples, if I had the choice between two otherwise identical vehicles, but one had the hood welded shut, I wouldn't buy the "closed-engine" version unless it were significantly cheaper. That holds even though I'm completely mechanically disinclined, and don't have even the remotest interest in tinkering with a vehicle! Why? Because I have a brother-in-law who's very good with cars, and I know I can ask for his help if I need it.
Let me make the analogy more clear: as far as vehicles go, "closed-source" is actually a negative value for me, even if I have no real interest in ever looking at the "source"; just having that option is enough.
All that said, I'm probably going to "buy" StarOffice after all -- I'm going to join the Mandrake Silver Club, even though I just downloaded and burned the 8.2 ISO's, and currently, the only tangible difference between the Standard membership and the Silver membership is the ability to download SO6. I haven't done it yet, since I'm out of work and broke at the moment (shameless self-promotion), but I will in the next month or so. Why? Primarily because of that last item in the checklist above; I want to put my money where my mouth is and support worthy software development. How about you?
Thanks, PhysicsGenius, you made my day. I laughed myself hoarse, especially reading the posters who thought you were serious! Sorry I don't have mod points.
"the cross-platform standardizations let me easily port my work for colleagues" - BWAAAHAAAHAAAA!!!!!