A natural monopoly is one that comes about in the marketplace not by gov't intervention but simply thru market forces. Actually, Microsoft is closer to a natural monopoly than the Electric company. Think the reverse of the chicken and egg problem: the more popular a platform is the more economic sense it makes to develop software for it, and the more desirable software available for a platform the more appealing it comes to the buying population. Now, I'm not saying MS hasn't done illegal things, but I am saying that Windows on the desktop is more of a natural monopoly than your electric company.
If a company has to do illegal things to be a "natural monopoly", it is not a natural monopoly. A natural monopoly is one that the market could not support more than 1 company providing that product or service. For example in a country that is 1000km2 and have a population of 1/2 million, it is virtually impossible to provide telephony services at reasonable prices if there are a few telcos. The cost of having multiple telephone networks is much more than what the telcos could recoup and therefore, it is not economical for the telcos to stay in the markets and they will exit the market. In fact, in real economics, no sane telcos would even enter the market unless there are stragetic reasons to do so. A natural monopoly can only happens if the only reason for monopoly to exists is economics. Monopoly powers gain through illegal means are by no way natural monopoly.
It beats me that how could a reply like above gets a troll rating.
anyway, I fully agree with the part about "just about anything completely new is difficult". I guess that for Linux to break into the desktop market, this point will have to be addressed. Linux is *NOT* that difficult to use (note use and not administrate). With KDE, IMHO, it is much easier to use than Windows 95. Seriously, a person who had use MS Windows before could use KDE with ease. I would think that a person who has started out using Linux will not want to move into MS windows because a lot of things would seems difficult in MS Windows. Furthermore, a lot of users do have this fear that they might "spoilt" the system if they click on the wrong place or do the wrong things. With their lack of understanding that the modern GUI interface is similar to MS windows GUI, the user might be much more willing to try and Linux would not seems to be that difficult anymore. Giving new users such assurance would be much more effective than telling them about how good Linux is, thus leading them to a less painful migration
However, there is a much more difficult problem that is not even technological related: inertia. Most people just would not change and like to do things as they are used to unless there are some compelling factors which forces them to change. I am sure that most people here familar with this. Unless some compeling reasons are out there for people to change to linux, linux will always remind an alternative OS.
If the case reach the court, they will probably say that they have never intended and will not be intending to sue Felton under the DMCA because SSSCA is coming up.
If a particular Linux distro was as widespread as Windows is, and the default install left things exposed (which has happened on numerous occasions) then the virus authors would be exploiting holes in that distro the same way these worms are exploited.
The thing I always read about Linux having low market shares and therefore no one wants to attack it. I don't think Slashdot actually got more readers than msdn or cnn but there are a lot of idiots claiming first post.
Let them ban one time pad. But in meantime, I can tell my friend, "drink today" and he will know what I mean. If the government is looking for an excuse to ban something, you can rest ensure that they are do it. so much for democracy. I am wondering why that I am even ashamed to share the same world as the americans. SO much for the real world. but now we are in the cyber world. Why not try something fun like decode the following?
I am not exactly a physicist but I would like a quote taken from another field, "64kb should be enough...". Granted that our present power(as in electrical) consumption is not high, there is no guranttee that it will not increase. As long as the capabilities is available, and the cost is low, people will be able to come up with ways of consuming the power. some of the cool ideas I have includes how to create outdoor snowing in a tropical country.
as I said before, RIAA might not miss my money. I only bought around 300+ cassettes and 150+ CDs before. At one time, I stop buying because I can't stand those craps on radio. Even groups I used to like are sounding real real bad. With napster, I am reminded of some old songs that I like and was kinda of replacing my tapes with CDs until the RIAA makes me decide that they would not see any more of my money. and yes, RIAA will not miss my money. But I do have more to spend nowadays. If this is not an incentive to boycott RIAA, what is?
Then banning of napster will only mean that 100% of napster usage are illegal which is not so. So are we talking about two-faced justice or are we talking about justice can be bought?
Well, I do agree that the limits of present computer will be reached. However, it only means that the number of cycles of a computer is limited. We could have computers that process more complicated process per cycle. I remember reading somewhere that there are "biological" computers that can solve complicated maths problems with just one processing cycle. This is very possible. An example is the human brain. It can process certain information effortlessly that normal computers could not process. Maybe after the limits of current computers is reached, more research will be devoted into biological computers to solve specialised problems. They might not be able to solved problems that current computer solves effortlessly, but they have might have a niche is solving problems that current or even future computer cannot solve.
If I want to let the package maintainers taking care of it, I would be better off using Windows. I use linux because it allows me to fiddle with it, and if doing anything going to break some dependencies, it is gonna to be a sad day for linux.
That's the favourite of the motion picture and recording industry. They seems to be living in the delusion that movies and musics are luxury items that the demand increases when the price increases. They should seriously sort out their thoughts. Bribing the government will get them somewhere but they are sure alienating the consumers now. Anyway, we all know that statistics says what HUMAN want them to say. Anyway, the more logical explanation is the coming recessions. Being luxury goods, people will tend buy less in hard times like now. And they should be glad that it is not a 90% fall like the nasdaq. I dun see nasdaq blaming napster (yet!).
anyway, those RIAA companies exec should get a clue. Their way of distributing musics SUCKS and they should learn from napster not condemning it. People would want to reward other people for their work but only if it is convenient and price is reasonable. By going through the net, they can potentially cut down the price of EACH song by a lot. At the same time, they can potentially earn more by bypassing the middleman! but of course they dun want to offend the retailer blah blah blah all those shit. They dun understand that by going through the web, they can sell much more because if I happen to hear a song on the radio and want to hear the song again, I will feel more incline to make a purchase then. (ask the girls). but if I wait till when I am free to buy it, then I might not want to buy it anymore.
From the viewpoint of the users, open source is good and commercial software is bad for obvious reason. With open source, a $1500 computer would still be $1500. with commercial softwares, it could easily double up to $3000 with most of the $1500 going into M$ pocket.
For a software developer viewpoint, on the surface, it is not good. How is the software developer going to make his money. That is where M$ is panicing. A lot of medicore software developers will also panic. Who is going to fill their rice bowls. While it is understanding that a dying person (or company) will fight for its survivor, does it really means that software developers can't make money by writing software? I hardly think so. Specialise software is always needed. Mass market commerical software can't applied in all situations. Software developers are able to make a living by writing specialised software. Sorry to microsoft though.
Personally, I would think that in a perfect world, there would be widespread adoptation of free open source software. Businesses are then about to channel their IT budgets into specialise software that would increase the productivity of the company. Software developers does not have to lose out. But sorry to m$.
Well, the views of certain idiots is that extreme punishments will deter hacking. But it is hardly true. In countries with captial punishment, people are still commiting crimes that will get them killed. So when are these idiots propsing capital punishment to hackers?
The fact is that the security of a system plays a part in inviting hackers. I am not saying that hacking is not be a crime, but more should be done to encourage system admin to keep systems secured. It can be as simple as if a company is broken in simply because the system admin does not believes that hackers exist, there should be no form of getting back any damages through civil courts or otherwise. Furthermore, the damage done to the computer system should not taken into account when the hackers informed are being sentenced. The case should be taken as the hacker has commited a crime by hacking and no damage is done. Furthermore, if sensitive information of other parties are stolen (like credit card information), the company should be made to pay for any losses that this parties suffered. This will force companies to take computer security more seriously and therefore cut down the amount of hacking that is going around. Also, laws must also be made to encourage software companies to comes up with patches within a certain period (maybe 1 week) after the vulnerablities is detected. If not, the software company involved should be make to pay for a certain percentage of losses that their client suffers as a result of failing to come out with a patch fast enough. It will encourages software companies to design software with security in mind and not user interface.
I would also like to add that the punishment for a crime must always be consistent with the crime commited. But it seems that this principle does not follows anymore. For example, if I am not wrong, in a CERTAIN country, if you kill a person, the chances are that you will get less jail time than a person who commit intangible, unquantifiable intellectal property thief is quite high. This is sad. Those idiots should comes up with laws where the punishment for hacking should be proportional to the effort need to commit the crime. If a script kiddy who took 1 min to download a script and and 30 secs to hack into a system which is not patched for 2 years, he should get 10 hours community service at most. However if a person hacking in a system where the system admin has taken due care in ensuring the system is secure, then he should get 10 years for all I care.
Maybe you are mistaken about their meaning of "innovation". Their meaning of innovation is that how they can manipulate the current legal/patents systems and layman perceptions for their own gains. Above all, it is for the innovative ways which they corrupt the word "innovation". Get a clue!
Pentagon today has announced new advances in autopilot technology. In the aftermaths of a E3C crash with a Chinese F8 aircraft, an unnamed Pentagon official had admitted that the US E3C aircraft is equiped with the latest autopilot system which can be used to avoid interception by hostile plane.
"In the last few years after intense research, our great nation has come out with the most advance autopilot system to date. This autopilot system is able to take over the control of a plane whenever hostile planes are detected. As it is well known that human reflexes are relatively slow to modern computers, the new autopilot system using a P4 running on the latest Windows OS is able to evade interception from up to 8 aircraft at one time."
When the inevitable question of whether it is wise to trust the life of so many Americans into the hands of a computer, the spokemans explain, "As shown in the recent plane crash incident, the autopilot performs admirably. It not only manage to crash a F8, but also put the blame solely on the Chinese. They should never have trust humans to operate the planes. But the incident also highlight the fact that the system needs minor fine tuning. A slight truncated bug cause the E3C plane to suffer minor damages and if forced to land on the Chinese soil. If not for the bug, we are confident that the other F8 would be crash too."
In another independent development, a survey had found that people with an IQ of over 60 thinks that is it absurb that an aircraft should be switch to auto-pilot mode when it is being intercept by other aeroplanes. People with an IQ of less than 60 gives random answers. The only exceptions are americans. The person who conducted the survey, who only wished to be known as Uncle Sam has remarked that people with an IQ of less than 60 and americans would make ideal pilots. He attribute the result of the studies to the recent incident that shown the reliablity of the autopilot system. He was caught quoting, "Get rid of the pilot and replace him with a computer. The whims of the americans must be respected regardless of the real benefits of such a system".
I was very puzzle by the reasoning of some people here. Let me just relate a simple real life story. When I was younger, someone I vaguely know was riding a motorcycle. A motorcycle as you know is more nimble than a container truck (think a F8 to an E3C). This person was riding at 120km/h (think mach 2). Suddenly a container truck turn into the main road at slow speed (think 300 km/h). Let's guess what happen. For those people who are still clueless, please try it out as the rider. It will be fun. After that of course, you can prove how a fast moving plane is able to avoid the turn of a slower plane if the slower plane moves into the path it is flying.
From just about every news source I have read, military experts from around the world say that the chinese scenario of the EP suddently swerving into the smaller and faster chinese jet is ridiculous.
Maybe you should quote the news report? All from the US media? You should read some taiwan news report that it is the trick of US spy plane to turn sharply. Note that I point to a taiwan news report and taiwan is US friendly. It seems that all that you read are US friendly news.
The US has offered to help look for the downed pilot--the offer of help has indeed been extended several times, and has been rejected several times by the Chinese government. If they really cared about the downed pilot, wouldn't they want all the help they could get--I know I would?
And let the wolf into the house? So that US can spy on china more effectively?
PS: You know what is the Internet for? It can provides you with the views of other people rather than the US propogandas.
How come I am missing ultima3 and ultima4? There seems to be a dearth of such games nowadays. But I guess MUD would be more fun than UO2.
In meantime, CS here I come....
Slashdot Mirror
A natural monopoly is one that comes about in the marketplace not by gov't intervention but simply thru market forces. Actually, Microsoft is closer to a natural monopoly than the Electric company. Think the reverse of the chicken and egg problem: the more popular a platform is the more economic sense it makes to develop software for it, and the more desirable software available for a platform the more appealing it comes to the buying population. Now, I'm not saying MS hasn't done illegal things, but I am saying that Windows on the desktop is more of a natural monopoly than your electric company.
If a company has to do illegal things to be a "natural monopoly", it is not a natural monopoly. A natural monopoly is one that the market could not support more than 1 company providing that product or service. For example in a country that is 1000km2 and have a population of 1/2 million, it is virtually impossible to provide telephony services at reasonable prices if there are a few telcos. The cost of having multiple telephone networks is much more than what the telcos could recoup and therefore, it is not economical for the telcos to stay in the markets and they will exit the market. In fact, in real economics, no sane telcos would even enter the market unless there are stragetic reasons to do so. A natural monopoly can only happens if the only reason for monopoly to exists is economics. Monopoly powers gain through illegal means are by no way natural monopoly.
It beats me that how could a reply like above gets a troll rating.
anyway, I fully agree with the part about "just about anything completely new is difficult". I guess that for Linux to break into the desktop market, this point will have to be addressed. Linux is *NOT* that difficult to use (note use and not administrate). With KDE, IMHO, it is much easier to use than Windows 95. Seriously, a person who had use MS Windows before could use KDE with ease. I would think that a person who has started out using Linux will not want to move into MS windows because a lot of things would seems difficult in MS Windows. Furthermore, a lot of users do have this fear that they might "spoilt" the system if they click on the wrong place or do the wrong things. With their lack of understanding that the modern GUI interface is similar to MS windows GUI, the user might be much more willing to try and Linux would not seems to be that difficult anymore. Giving new users such assurance would be much more effective than telling them about how good Linux is, thus leading them to a less painful migration
However, there is a much more difficult problem that is not even technological related: inertia. Most people just would not change and like to do things as they are used to unless there are some compelling factors which forces them to change. I am sure that most people here familar with this. Unless some compeling reasons are out there for people to change to linux, linux will always remind an alternative OS.
Things like that only makes you wonders whether this world is just. I guess we are see it for ourselves
If the case reach the court, they will probably say that they have never intended and will not be intending to sue Felton under the DMCA because SSSCA is coming up.
Cold fusion as popularly described has been debunked.
i on .html
What if cold fusion is real?
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfus
If a particular Linux distro was as widespread as Windows is, and the default install left things exposed (which has happened on numerous occasions) then the virus authors would be exploiting holes in that distro the same way these worms are exploited.
The thing I always read about Linux having low market shares and therefore no one wants to attack it. I don't think Slashdot actually got more readers than msdn or cnn but there are a lot of idiots claiming first post.
That's not the point. The point is Microsoft virus is more "correlated" than open source and communism.
Let them ban one time pad. But in meantime, I can tell my friend, "drink today" and he will know what I mean. If the government is looking for an excuse to ban something, you can rest ensure that they are do it. so much for democracy. I am wondering why that I am even ashamed to share the same world as the americans. SO much for the real world. but now we are in the cyber world. Why not try something fun like decode the following?
2 69 46383195247107584106468610793104563825656410786751 481010158
10371424387110629253154781326284887591733494445
I am not exactly a physicist but I would like a quote taken from another field, "64kb should be enough...". Granted that our present power(as in electrical) consumption is not high, there is no guranttee that it will not increase. As long as the capabilities is available, and the cost is low, people will be able to come up with ways of consuming the power. some of the cool ideas I have includes how to create outdoor snowing in a tropical country.
as I said before, RIAA might not miss my money. I only bought around 300+ cassettes and 150+ CDs before. At one time, I stop buying because I can't stand those craps on radio. Even groups I used to like are sounding real real bad. With napster, I am reminded of some old songs that I like and was kinda of replacing my tapes with CDs until the RIAA makes me decide that they would not see any more of my money. and yes, RIAA will not miss my money. But I do have more to spend nowadays. If this is not an incentive to boycott RIAA, what is?
Then banning of napster will only mean that 100% of napster usage are illegal which is not so. So are we talking about two-faced justice or are we talking about justice can be bought?
Micro$oft took the Windows from X windows. Just check the release date.
Well, I do agree that the limits of present computer will be reached. However, it only means that the number of cycles of a computer is limited. We could have computers that process more complicated process per cycle. I remember reading somewhere that there are "biological" computers that can solve complicated maths problems with just one processing cycle. This is very possible. An example is the human brain. It can process certain information effortlessly that normal computers could not process. Maybe after the limits of current computers is reached, more research will be devoted into biological computers to solve specialised problems. They might not be able to solved problems that current computer solves effortlessly, but they have might have a niche is solving problems that current or even future computer cannot solve.
If I want to let the package maintainers taking care of it, I would be better off using Windows. I use linux because it allows me to fiddle with it, and if doing anything going to break some dependencies, it is gonna to be a sad day for linux.
.. to use so many libraries?
That's the favourite of the motion picture and recording industry. They seems to be living in the delusion that movies and musics are luxury items that the demand increases when the price increases. They should seriously sort out their thoughts. Bribing the government will get them somewhere but they are sure alienating the consumers now. Anyway, we all know that statistics says what HUMAN want them to say. Anyway, the more logical explanation is the coming recessions. Being luxury goods, people will tend buy less in hard times like now. And they should be glad that it is not a 90% fall like the nasdaq. I dun see nasdaq blaming napster (yet!).
anyway, those RIAA companies exec should get a clue. Their way of distributing musics SUCKS and they should learn from napster not condemning it. People would want to reward other people for their work but only if it is convenient and price is reasonable. By going through the net, they can potentially cut down the price of EACH song by a lot. At the same time, they can potentially earn more by bypassing the middleman! but of course they dun want to offend the retailer blah blah blah all those shit. They dun understand that by going through the web, they can sell much more because if I happen to hear a song on the radio and want to hear the song again, I will feel more incline to make a purchase then. (ask the girls). but if I wait till when I am free to buy it, then I might not want to buy it anymore.
From the viewpoint of the users, open source is good and commercial software is bad for obvious reason. With open source, a $1500 computer would still be $1500. with commercial softwares, it could easily double up to $3000 with most of the $1500 going into M$ pocket.
For a software developer viewpoint, on the surface, it is not good. How is the software developer going to make his money. That is where M$ is panicing. A lot of medicore software developers will also panic. Who is going to fill their rice bowls. While it is understanding that a dying person (or company) will fight for its survivor, does it really means that software developers can't make money by writing software? I hardly think so. Specialise software is always needed. Mass market commerical software can't applied in all situations. Software developers are able to make a living by writing specialised software. Sorry to microsoft though.
Personally, I would think that in a perfect world, there would be widespread adoptation of free open source software. Businesses are then about to channel their IT budgets into specialise software that would increase the productivity of the company. Software developers does not have to lose out. But sorry to m$.
Well, the views of certain idiots is that extreme punishments will deter hacking. But it is hardly true. In countries with captial punishment, people are still commiting crimes that will get them killed. So when are these idiots propsing capital punishment to hackers?
The fact is that the security of a system plays a part in inviting hackers. I am not saying that hacking is not be a crime, but more should be done to encourage system admin to keep systems secured. It can be as simple as if a company is broken in simply because the system admin does not believes that hackers exist, there should be no form of getting back any damages through civil courts or otherwise. Furthermore, the damage done to the computer system should not taken into account when the hackers informed are being sentenced. The case should be taken as the hacker has commited a crime by hacking and no damage is done. Furthermore, if sensitive information of other parties are stolen (like credit card information), the company should be made to pay for any losses that this parties suffered. This will force companies to take computer security more seriously and therefore cut down the amount of hacking that is going around. Also, laws must also be made to encourage software companies to comes up with patches within a certain period (maybe 1 week) after the vulnerablities is detected. If not, the software company involved should be make to pay for a certain percentage of losses that their client suffers as a result of failing to come out with a patch fast enough. It will encourages software companies to design software with security in mind and not user interface.
I would also like to add that the punishment for a crime must always be consistent with the crime commited. But it seems that this principle does not follows anymore. For example, if I am not wrong, in a CERTAIN country, if you kill a person, the chances are that you will get less jail time than a person who commit intangible, unquantifiable intellectal property thief is quite high. This is sad. Those idiots should comes up with laws where the punishment for hacking should be proportional to the effort need to commit the crime. If a script kiddy who took 1 min to download a script and and 30 secs to hack into a system which is not patched for 2 years, he should get 10 hours community service at most. However if a person hacking in a system where the system admin has taken due care in ensuring the system is secure, then he should get 10 years for all I care.
Maybe you are mistaken about their meaning of "innovation". Their meaning of innovation is that how they can manipulate the current legal/patents systems and layman perceptions for their own gains. Above all, it is for the innovative ways which they corrupt the word "innovation". Get a clue!
Pentagon today has announced new advances in autopilot technology. In the aftermaths of a E3C crash with a Chinese F8 aircraft, an unnamed Pentagon official had admitted that the US E3C aircraft is equiped with the latest autopilot system which can be used to avoid interception by hostile plane.
"In the last few years after intense research, our great nation has come out with the most advance autopilot system to date. This autopilot system is able to take over the control of a plane whenever hostile planes are detected. As it is well known that human reflexes are relatively slow to modern computers, the new autopilot system using a P4 running on the latest Windows OS is able to evade interception from up to 8 aircraft at one time."
When the inevitable question of whether it is wise to trust the life of so many Americans into the hands of a computer, the spokemans explain, "As shown in the recent plane crash incident, the autopilot performs admirably. It not only manage to crash a F8, but also put the blame solely on the Chinese. They should never have trust humans to operate the planes. But the incident also highlight the fact that the system needs minor fine tuning. A slight truncated bug cause the E3C plane to suffer minor damages and if forced to land on the Chinese soil. If not for the bug, we are confident that the other F8 would be crash too."
In another independent development, a survey had found that people with an IQ of over 60 thinks that is it absurb that an aircraft should be switch to auto-pilot mode when it is being intercept by other aeroplanes. People with an IQ of less than 60 gives random answers. The only exceptions are americans. The person who conducted the survey, who only wished to be known as Uncle Sam has remarked that people with an IQ of less than 60 and americans would make ideal pilots. He attribute the result of the studies to the recent incident that shown the reliablity of the autopilot system. He was caught quoting, "Get rid of the pilot and replace him with a computer. The whims of the americans must be respected regardless of the real benefits of such a system".
Source: Who is the bigger idiot today?
You mean US got the right to dictate who has the right to host the olympics? It sure reflect americans well.
I was very puzzle by the reasoning of some people here. Let me just relate a simple real life story. When I was younger, someone I vaguely know was riding a motorcycle. A motorcycle as you know is more nimble than a container truck (think a F8 to an E3C). This person was riding at 120km/h (think mach 2). Suddenly a container truck turn into the main road at slow speed (think 300 km/h). Let's guess what happen. For those people who are still clueless, please try it out as the rider. It will be fun. After that of course, you can prove how a fast moving plane is able to avoid the turn of a slower plane if the slower plane moves into the path it is flying.
From just about every news source I have read, military experts from around the world say that the chinese scenario of the EP suddently swerving into the smaller and faster chinese jet is ridiculous.
Maybe you should quote the news report? All from the US media? You should read some taiwan news report that it is the trick of US spy plane to turn sharply. Note that I point to a taiwan news report and taiwan is US friendly. It seems that all that you read are US friendly news.
The US has offered to help look for the downed pilot--the offer of help has indeed been extended several times, and has been rejected several times by the Chinese government. If they really cared about the downed pilot, wouldn't they want all the help they could get--I know I would?
And let the wolf into the house? So that US can spy on china more effectively?
PS: You know what is the Internet for? It can provides you with the views of other people rather than the US propogandas.
I do hope that SDL is not as "interface coherence" as DirectX. I am unable to run games when new version of directX comes out. That's says a lot.
How come I am missing ultima3 and ultima4? There seems to be a dearth of such games nowadays. But I guess MUD would be more fun than UO2. In meantime, CS here I come....