Yeah, and, once you toss in a hundred million or more dollars to pay the thousands of people required to actually develop it, then, your 2000% markup is really a fantasy.
No, it isn't a fantasy. It is real. Markup only refers to the amount you add to an individual item over the manufacture cost. If it only costs you 3.25 to manufacture a boxed copy of Vista and you charge $66, that is a 2000% markup, plain and simple. I shouldn't have use the word profit because obviously what you make on markup does not necessarily give a total net profit (once you add in development costs). That said, if you have recouped your R&D costs, any sale past that point is mostly profit in the case of software because you can make infinite copies very little additional cost.
Trying to exclude the R&D costs from software profit percentages is like trying to explain Lucy without evolution. Sounds ok on paper, but really, just a bunch of ignorant babble that doesn't make much sense.
Ok, there's a confusion here between profit and markup. And for that I apologize.
I'm not trying to exclude R&D costs. Hardware has R&D costs too. I'm just saying that if you can sell a boxed copy of Vista for more than $3.25 (guessing at the manufacture cost per box), you have made something off of it and can then apply that to your R&D costs.
Selling one copy of Vista for $3.50 would be better than not selling any copies at all. That is $0.25 in your pocket (which you can apply to R&D costs if you like) that you didn't have before. Hence Microsoft could conceivably sell Vista for much less that $66 in China if they felt they had to to maximize they're profits. That is the nice thing about software. You have a lot of leeway in pricing. It isn't like hardware where you might only have a margin of 20% to work with. Software developers have huge margins to work with... assuming they can sell the product at all.
Well, the question wasn't how can anyone do it, the question was how did *I* do it. The first point, avoiding large corporations, is probably the most effective way that I have avoided office politics deciding the fate of my job. You can form more personal bonds in a small company and it is much more difficult for someone else to hide their incompetence.
Another good strategy is simply to be good at what you do and don't give anyone any reason to doubt your sincerity or integrity. Always be upfront, frank, and honest. Never be afraid to say "I don't know" if you don't know something. If/when someone approaches your boss to complain about you (presumably for no good reason), your boss will take your side by default and you can therefore remain oblivious to the politics.
Of course, if you're in management, too bad. Politics is pretty much your jobs then.;-)
OBOL is not really a programming language, thus the reason it is dying. I know I am being a snob, but the quality that makes COBOL great (eg anyone can write and become an expert), is also the quality that makes the devs go back to college to learn the complexities of PHP or another object orientated language.
Complexities of PHP? You've GOT to be kidding me. Who goes back to college to learn PHP??
I'm drenched in sweat here in Hotlanta (it's 82F and 66% humidity and climbing to 94) and I really miss New England's Spring and Fall.
Haha, it is almost chilly here today in Portland. Well, cool, anyway. Portland summers are the mildest I've ever experienced in the lower 48. Though I imagine Seattle is similar.
eople (I.T. guys included) will almost always go with what they are comfortable with. IIS is very easy to configure and you could have a Windows Server up and running in no time. With Apache, it's not so simple. Modifying text files gives the admins great control over nearly everything; but it's not so simple.
True, but I don't think many people spend THAT much time figuring it out. Apache comes working out of the box on nearly all Linux distributions. Maybe you tweak it a little, but not everyone is spending days trying to figure it out. PHP, MySQL, etc all work out of the box. Though I agree, if you want much more than that you can spend some time figuring it out.
And some n00b admin couldn't exactly master Apache in a weekend like they could IIS.
Whoa, wait a minute there... "mastery?" Microsoft products might be easy to setup initially, but that doesn't in any way make them easy to master. I've been using Windows on and off for 20 years and I am far , far from mastery. Like most Windows admins (or Unix admins forced to admin Windows from time to time, as the case may be), I just do what is necessary to get it running and then I just cross my fingers and hope it stays running. Many of hte more interesting features remain hidden.
Anyway, I'd first like to see the numbers of sites/servers with hosting providers versus private server before I make any guesses and/or generalities about why people might be using IIS.
Ya know, I always wondered why most places weren't more efficient about the cooling of their datacenters... particularly in the winter. Like it'll be 20 degrees F outside and they're STILL running A/C for the computers. WTF? Just vent a small amount of the outside air into the datacenter and you're done. Or better yet, just blow in the air from the offices and send them warm, data center heated air.
Another question, why do we vent the exhaust from our refrigerators into the house during the summer? Just seems like there's a lot you could do to save energy just by moving what would outerwise be waste heat to places where it can either be used or at least not cause a larger cooling problem.
To a point - you have to recoup your development costs, and those tend to climb exponentially with the complexity of the product.
Like I said, if it is the difference between selling it cheap and not selling it at all, most any price is profit. Perhaps "profit" is the wrong word. The point being that, with software, there is very little cost in producing an individual copy. It isn't like hardware where you have a significant cost to make each individual item (on top of the R&D) with maybe a 30% markup. For software, consider $0.25 for the media, $1 to print the box, maybe $2 for some basic printed materials (not sure what comes with Vista) and a $66 price tag. That is a 2000% markup!
Also, $66 is still pretty damn expensive for most Chinese, AFAIK. So even if they wanted to buy the $66 version, I doubt they could realistically afford it.
The nice thing about software though is that you can charge whatever you want for it and still make a profit. That is, if there is a difference between selling it for cheap and not selling it at all. Expect to see further price cuts from Microsoft.
-mathtew
Re:Mod Parent Insightful
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There you go again. Even a cursory glance at my posting history would show you I'm not a troll.
Doesn't mean anything. You dont' have much of a posting history for such a low slashdot ID. This could the account you use when you're not trolling, only you slipped up. Or maybe you're just not a regular troll.
The rest of your post was too long, didn't read it, sorry.
I am fairly certain that you didn't read most of what I wrote before that either. Don't worry about it. As far as I can tell, trolls often don't read half of what they're responding to. It isn't important. In fact, not reading what you're responding to can make the troll even more effective.
Re:Mod Parent Insightful
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Thanks for dragging what was supposed to be a civil technical debate down to this level.
What's the problem? You won, troll. You should be happy. Or are you new at this and don't know this goes down? See, what happens is you keep replying to me trying to get me to be even more personal (like now). And basically it goes on and on until you get bored and move on to the next unsuspecting victim. When you get good at it, you can even get multiple trolls going simutaneously. And you can even try to get multiple victims in on one thread. But no matter what happens or what is said, you win... as long you keep getting people to reply to you. Isn't it beautiful?
Here's my suggestion, if you will allow me. What you should do next is continue claiming that all you wanted was a "technical" discussion. Maybe try to revive the discussion by going back and quoting something I said. Preferably it should be out of context. But really, it doesn't matter. As long as you get under my skin.
Oh, but watch out for karma! You'll probably want to get your Slashdot karma bonus up to +1 before you start any serious trolling. That way your posts are more likely to be read. One easy way to do this is find a popular opinion on a subject and repost it the next time the subject comes up again (happens a lot here on Slashdot). Eventually you'll get a +1 karma bonus for every post and you will get more eyeballs right off the bat... without having to say anything intelligent. Nifty, huh?
I've never had the stomach for trolling, personally. But I've seen it a lot and know a lot of the tactics. I *have*, however, honed my sense of sarcasm. Do you like it? Of course you do! The more verbiage the better, right? You had me at "ridiculous."
Re:Mod Parent Insightful
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Ah yes, the trusty old personal insult. When all your arguments fail, it's the next best thing. Truly the reprieve of the weak minded.
Just giving you you seem to be trolling for. I mean, you didn't actually expect me to defend claims that I never made, did you?
And just in case you aren't just trolling, let me give you a little friendly advice. Next time someone seems to be making a claim (in this case multiple claims) that is obviously false to the point of being silly, try giving them the the benefit of the doubt before jumping on them like a mutt in heat.
Oh, I SO wish they were exploded... Hey, thanks for giving me an idea for my next software product, Salesman Exploder!
Ok, I guess it is more like they puked rather than exploded. It reminds me of a comment my wife made when we went to a certain Mexican restaurant for the first time. "Wow, I looks like Mexico threw up in here."
A lot of people just don't know about OpenOffice. People will use this because they don't feel like paying for the full thing (MS Office). Sure, they'll mumble and groan about the ads and etcetera, but they'll use it.
They'll use it until they find out (the hard way) that they can't share the resulting files with others. WEll, technically there is a Works to Word converter, but Microsoft, for some "strange" reason didn't see fit to include it in Office by default. I don't think Microsoft really wants people to use Works at all. They just want to get people using some Microsoft product and annoy them (with ads and document incompatibility) into "upgrading" to Office. Works is a gateway application.
The only thing worse than people passing around Word documents (especially for static forms and such) is passing aroudn Works documents. I guess it is possible to get converters from Works to Word (though Word doesn't open them natively AFAIK), but it is a pain the the ass for Mac users. Even if you have Office 2004, you can't open Works documents. You have to find a Windows machine with the converter. It is like Microsoft is competing with themselves.
The other part of the "oh god, please, no" is more ads. Your average Windows box ALREADY looks like a 150 person marketing department exploded inside it.
-matthew
Re:Mod Parent Insightful
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Um, your own words: "By the time writers become common, 50GB will be nothing." Or maybe on your planet nothing != worthless?
OH my god, I can't believe your going to quibble over this. Fine, it is worth 50GB. Not worthless. Happy?
Dual layer DVD-Rs are still much more expensive than 2 single-layer discs (at least around here), so this is not really a viable option.
Well neither is dual layer Blu-Ray, idiot. Clearly we're not talking about what is viable or even practical. Or else you woudl have simply agreed that Blu-Ray backups probably won't be any more practical than DVD backups are today.
I only said it's much more attractive than 160 discs. Are you seriously unable to think in relative terms? Or do you deny the difference between 15 and 160? I have no idea what's your point here.
Again, you hve to compare dual layer to dual layer. So it is only a difference between 83 and 15. Or compare single layer, 160 vs. 30.
We were discussing the eventual situation if 50GB discs and burners become affordable and widespread as plain DVD-Rs are now. You were saying that by the time writers become common it would make no difference, which is patently wrong.
It is not wrong if you assume that storage requirements will grow significantly before Blu-Ray burners become widely avaiable. Relatively speaking, they probably won't be any more valuable than DVDs are *today* for general purpose backup.
Fucking trolls.
Re:Mod Parent Insightful
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I'm with you 100% on using external hard drives for near term backups, I also pretty much gave up on optical storage. But your assertion that 50GB media is somehow worthless because you can't fit everything on a single disc is still ludicrous.
What is ludicrous is your suggestion that I said that 50GB media is "worthless." I said no such thing. Your making shit up just to create an argument even though you seem to agree with me 100%. Strange.
You would need 160 DVDs to archive everything on that 750GB drive which is clearly ridiculous,
Actually, it would only be about 83 if you had dual layer DVD burner. Which is what you should be comparing to the 50GB blu-ray option. Still not attractive, but whatever.
but if you used these hypothetical 50GB blu-rays it would only take 15 discs, which is already in the realm of the practical. So there is a big difference, where you claim none.
Only 15 disks? Gee, you make it sound like such an attractive option. That's a lot of disk swapping. Not to mention that one or two of them may end up being coasters.
Also, keep in mind that the 50GB assumes you have a dual layer burner (and potentially very expensive media)... which is probably even further away for most people than just a plain ol' BD burner. Even today, most people don't even have dual layer DVD burners.
-matthew
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I was going to ask who in their right mind would even think about spanning a backup across 100 DVD's, but then I remembered my dad's box full of floppy disks he used for backup in teh early 90's. It sucked. OPtical isn't much better.
I've always considered optical media to be a terrible backup method... especially if it means spanning disks. Maybe archives, such as music or photos or movies.. stuff that never changes, but for backup? No way. Just get a 750GB external HD. My dad uses Ghost to keep a backup on external drive and it works great.
-matthew
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Nah, even now 50GB is probably not sufficient for a full backup for a lot of people. By the time writers become common, 50GB will be nothing.
Re:Porn is irrelevant
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and conventional formats. The impact of some format supporting or not supporting porn is fairly low. Besides, there are Blu Ray porn titles if you really want your razor rash in HD so the whole argument is moot.
Razor rash? That is so amateur. I'm pretty sure porn stars use wax.:)
"You can't own information. It is totally absurd." . . . "I still believe in giving credit where credit is due for ideas and ensuring that creators are not plagiarized."
Are you attempting to dissect the semantics of the argument by narrowing or broadening the scopes of "information" and "ownership"?/i>
The definition of information is fine the way it is. It is the idea of ownership (of information in particular) that I question.
What do YOU call it when someone has created a work, and there is a mechanism for "ensuring" that it is not plagiarized?
I call that copyright.. or at least what copyright should be, IMO. What's the confusion, here? Plagiarism is fraud.
Is there some sanitized synonym for "own" that we should be using?
It wouldn't be much of a synonym, would it?
"People seem to think that they have a right to make money off of their ideas. And that is just absurd. They have the right *try* and make money off of their ideas . .."
There is obviously no guarantee that a particular idea will be valuable. However, the people that come up with the idea should have a right to "try" to profit from the value of their idea WITHOUT a hundred other people and large corporations exploiting the idea at the same time!
But isn't that it works today? Some musician comes up with a song, for example, and large corporations exploit it? This idea that there are lots of independent people out there trying to profit on their own from their ideas is largely a myth. All the small time indie musicians I know would love to see their music get out there and be traded and heard. It isn't the indipendent creators that are clammoring for intellectual property "rights." It is the large corporations who exploit ideas.
Read up on that site I linked to, questioncopyright.org. Karl Fogel is much more eloquent and persuasive than I.
I agree that the whole system of patents and copyrights has severe flaws, but the anarchists who think that brilliant ideas and creative works should be "free" and universally exploitable once they become public are an obstacle to the implementation of a better system. That line of reasoning is absurd, and if you bring it to its logical conclusion is even more unfair than the system we have now.
So where do you think the severe flaws are? Do patents and copyright just last a little longer than you'd like?
You know, I only recently came upon this idea (not original, of course) of questioning copyright during a recent discussion here on slashdot. At first I was just making a logical argument like one might in a formal debate... sort of playing the devil's advocate. And it suddenly stuck me that it was more than a debate exercise. It really made sense. Copyright and patent laws as we know them are fundamentally broken. You can't own information. It is totally absurd. I mean, I still believe in giving credit where credit is due for ideas and ensuring that creators are not plagiarized, because that would be fraud (what copyright should be about), but there is absolutely no moral or logical basis for the ownership of information. People seem to think that they have a right to make money off of their ideas. And that is just absurd. They have the right *try* and make money off of their ideas, but nobody else is obligated to ensure that their business model is profitable. If you decide to make some information public, it is out there. You can't control it.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it isn't a fantasy. It is real. Markup only refers to the amount you add to an individual item over the manufacture cost. If it only costs you 3.25 to manufacture a boxed copy of Vista and you charge $66, that is a 2000% markup, plain and simple. I shouldn't have use the word profit because obviously what you make on markup does not necessarily give a total net profit (once you add in development costs). That said, if you have recouped your R&D costs, any sale past that point is mostly profit in the case of software because you can make infinite copies very little additional cost.
Ok, there's a confusion here between profit and markup. And for that I apologize.
I'm not trying to exclude R&D costs. Hardware has R&D costs too. I'm just saying that if you can sell a boxed copy of Vista for more than $3.25 (guessing at the manufacture cost per box), you have made something off of it and can then apply that to your R&D costs.
Selling one copy of Vista for $3.50 would be better than not selling any copies at all. That is $0.25 in your pocket (which you can apply to R&D costs if you like) that you didn't have before. Hence Microsoft could conceivably sell Vista for much less that $66 in China if they felt they had to to maximize they're profits. That is the nice thing about software. You have a lot of leeway in pricing. It isn't like hardware where you might only have a margin of 20% to work with. Software developers have huge margins to work with... assuming they can sell the product at all.
Well, the question wasn't how can anyone do it, the question was how did *I* do it. The first point, avoiding large corporations, is probably the most effective way that I have avoided office politics deciding the fate of my job. You can form more personal bonds in a small company and it is much more difficult for someone else to hide their incompetence.
;-)
Another good strategy is simply to be good at what you do and don't give anyone any reason to doubt your sincerity or integrity. Always be upfront, frank, and honest. Never be afraid to say "I don't know" if you don't know something. If/when someone approaches your boss to complain about you (presumably for no good reason), your boss will take your side by default and you can therefore remain oblivious to the politics.
Of course, if you're in management, too bad. Politics is pretty much your jobs then.
Complexities of PHP? You've GOT to be kidding me. Who goes back to college to learn PHP??
-matthew
Three possible methods... may be used in combination:
1) Small companies/organizations
2) Being completely oblivious to politics and not getting involved
3) Consulting/contract work
Note, I'm not the original person you were asking. I just thought I'd chime in.
Haha, it is almost chilly here today in Portland. Well, cool, anyway. Portland summers are the mildest I've ever experienced in the lower 48. Though I imagine Seattle is similar.
-matthew
True, but I don't think many people spend THAT much time figuring it out. Apache comes working out of the box on nearly all Linux distributions. Maybe you tweak it a little, but not everyone is spending days trying to figure it out. PHP, MySQL, etc all work out of the box. Though I agree, if you want much more than that you can spend some time figuring it out.
Whoa, wait a minute there... "mastery?" Microsoft products might be easy to setup initially, but that doesn't in any way make them easy to master. I've been using Windows on and off for 20 years and I am far , far from mastery. Like most Windows admins (or Unix admins forced to admin Windows from time to time, as the case may be), I just do what is necessary to get it running and then I just cross my fingers and hope it stays running. Many of hte more interesting features remain hidden.
Anyway, I'd first like to see the numbers of sites/servers with hosting providers versus private server before I make any guesses and/or generalities about why people might be using IIS.
-matthew
Ya know, I always wondered why most places weren't more efficient about the cooling of their datacenters... particularly in the winter. Like it'll be 20 degrees F outside and they're STILL running A/C for the computers. WTF? Just vent a small amount of the outside air into the datacenter and you're done. Or better yet, just blow in the air from the offices and send them warm, data center heated air.
Another question, why do we vent the exhaust from our refrigerators into the house during the summer? Just seems like there's a lot you could do to save energy just by moving what would outerwise be waste heat to places where it can either be used or at least not cause a larger cooling problem.
Like I said, if it is the difference between selling it cheap and not selling it at all, most any price is profit. Perhaps "profit" is the wrong word. The point being that, with software, there is very little cost in producing an individual copy. It isn't like hardware where you have a significant cost to make each individual item (on top of the R&D) with maybe a 30% markup. For software, consider $0.25 for the media, $1 to print the box, maybe $2 for some basic printed materials (not sure what comes with Vista) and a $66 price tag. That is a 2000% markup!
-matthew
Also, $66 is still pretty damn expensive for most Chinese, AFAIK. So even if they wanted to buy the $66 version, I doubt they could realistically afford it.
The nice thing about software though is that you can charge whatever you want for it and still make a profit. That is, if there is a difference between selling it for cheap and not selling it at all. Expect to see further price cuts from Microsoft.
-mathtew
Doesn't mean anything. You dont' have much of a posting history for such a low slashdot ID. This could the account you use when you're not trolling, only you slipped up. Or maybe you're just not a regular troll.
I am fairly certain that you didn't read most of what I wrote before that either. Don't worry about it. As far as I can tell, trolls often don't read half of what they're responding to. It isn't important. In fact, not reading what you're responding to can make the troll even more effective.
What's the problem? You won, troll. You should be happy. Or are you new at this and don't know this goes down? See, what happens is you keep replying to me trying to get me to be even more personal (like now). And basically it goes on and on until you get bored and move on to the next unsuspecting victim. When you get good at it, you can even get multiple trolls going simutaneously. And you can even try to get multiple victims in on one thread. But no matter what happens or what is said, you win... as long you keep getting people to reply to you. Isn't it beautiful?
Here's my suggestion, if you will allow me. What you should do next is continue claiming that all you wanted was a "technical" discussion. Maybe try to revive the discussion by going back and quoting something I said. Preferably it should be out of context. But really, it doesn't matter. As long as you get under my skin.
Oh, but watch out for karma! You'll probably want to get your Slashdot karma bonus up to +1 before you start any serious trolling. That way your posts are more likely to be read. One easy way to do this is find a popular opinion on a subject and repost it the next time the subject comes up again (happens a lot here on Slashdot). Eventually you'll get a +1 karma bonus for every post and you will get more eyeballs right off the bat... without having to say anything intelligent. Nifty, huh?
I've never had the stomach for trolling, personally. But I've seen it a lot and know a lot of the tactics. I *have*, however, honed my sense of sarcasm. Do you like it? Of course you do! The more verbiage the better, right? You had me at "ridiculous."
Just giving you you seem to be trolling for. I mean, you didn't actually expect me to defend claims that I never made, did you?
And just in case you aren't just trolling, let me give you a little friendly advice. Next time someone seems to be making a claim (in this case multiple claims) that is obviously false to the point of being silly, try giving them the the benefit of the doubt before jumping on them like a mutt in heat.
HTH
Ok, I guess it is more like they puked rather than exploded. It reminds me of a comment my wife made when we went to a certain Mexican restaurant for the first time. "Wow, I looks like Mexico threw up in here."
-matthew
Um... I don't think hypocrisy means what you think it means.
They'll use it until they find out (the hard way) that they can't share the resulting files with others. WEll, technically there is a Works to Word converter, but Microsoft, for some "strange" reason didn't see fit to include it in Office by default. I don't think Microsoft really wants people to use Works at all. They just want to get people using some Microsoft product and annoy them (with ads and document incompatibility) into "upgrading" to Office. Works is a gateway application.
-matthew
The only thing worse than people passing around Word documents (especially for static forms and such) is passing aroudn Works documents. I guess it is possible to get converters from Works to Word (though Word doesn't open them natively AFAIK), but it is a pain the the ass for Mac users. Even if you have Office 2004, you can't open Works documents. You have to find a Windows machine with the converter. It is like Microsoft is competing with themselves.
The other part of the "oh god, please, no" is more ads. Your average Windows box ALREADY looks like a 150 person marketing department exploded inside it.
-matthew
OH my god, I can't believe your going to quibble over this. Fine, it is worth 50GB. Not worthless. Happy?
Well neither is dual layer Blu-Ray, idiot. Clearly we're not talking about what is viable or even practical. Or else you woudl have simply agreed that Blu-Ray backups probably won't be any more practical than DVD backups are today.
Again, you hve to compare dual layer to dual layer. So it is only a difference between 83 and 15. Or compare single layer, 160 vs. 30.
It is not wrong if you assume that storage requirements will grow significantly before Blu-Ray burners become widely avaiable. Relatively speaking, they probably won't be any more valuable than DVDs are *today* for general purpose backup.
Fucking trolls.
What is ludicrous is your suggestion that I said that 50GB media is "worthless." I said no such thing. Your making shit up just to create an argument even though you seem to agree with me 100%. Strange.
Actually, it would only be about 83 if you had dual layer DVD burner. Which is what you should be comparing to the 50GB blu-ray option. Still not attractive, but whatever.
Only 15 disks? Gee, you make it sound like such an attractive option. That's a lot of disk swapping. Not to mention that one or two of them may end up being coasters.
Also, keep in mind that the 50GB assumes you have a dual layer burner (and potentially very expensive media)... which is probably even further away for most people than just a plain ol' BD burner. Even today, most people don't even have dual layer DVD burners.
-matthew
I was going to ask who in their right mind would even think about spanning a backup across 100 DVD's, but then I remembered my dad's box full of floppy disks he used for backup in teh early 90's. It sucked. OPtical isn't much better.
I've always considered optical media to be a terrible backup method... especially if it means spanning disks. Maybe archives, such as music or photos or movies.. stuff that never changes, but for backup? No way. Just get a 750GB external HD. My dad uses Ghost to keep a backup on external drive and it works great.
-matthew
Nah, even now 50GB is probably not sufficient for a full backup for a lot of people. By the time writers become common, 50GB will be nothing.
Razor rash? That is so amateur. I'm pretty sure porn stars use wax.
-matthew
The definition of information is fine the way it is. It is the idea of ownership (of information in particular) that I question.
I call that copyright.. or at least what copyright should be, IMO. What's the confusion, here? Plagiarism is fraud.
It wouldn't be much of a synonym, would it?
But isn't that it works today? Some musician comes up with a song, for example, and large corporations exploit it? This idea that there are lots of independent people out there trying to profit on their own from their ideas is largely a myth. All the small time indie musicians I know would love to see their music get out there and be traded and heard. It isn't the indipendent creators that are clammoring for intellectual property "rights." It is the large corporations who exploit ideas.
Read up on that site I linked to, questioncopyright.org. Karl Fogel is much more eloquent and persuasive than I.
So where do you think the severe flaws are? Do patents and copyright just last a little longer than you'd like?
-matthew
You know, I only recently came upon this idea (not original, of course) of questioning copyright during a recent discussion here on slashdot. At first I was just making a logical argument like one might in a formal debate... sort of playing the devil's advocate. And it suddenly stuck me that it was more than a debate exercise. It really made sense. Copyright and patent laws as we know them are fundamentally broken. You can't own information. It is totally absurd. I mean, I still believe in giving credit where credit is due for ideas and ensuring that creators are not plagiarized, because that would be fraud (what copyright should be about), but there is absolutely no moral or logical basis for the ownership of information. People seem to think that they have a right to make money off of their ideas. And that is just absurd. They have the right *try* and make money off of their ideas, but nobody else is obligated to ensure that their business model is profitable. If you decide to make some information public, it is out there. You can't control it.
-matthew
Is it? To whom? Most people I know go right along with the current model of "intellectual property."
You're right, it isn't the law that are the problem. It is the idea that people can own information that is the problem.
-matthew
Methinks the time is ripe to question copyright.