I am sorry, but this is not even close to an arms race. In fact the RIAA is pretty smart on this one.
If you use protocol X today, and the protocol Y tomorrow it is completely irrelevant, because you need to move Z bytes. Unless you managed to develop some magical protocol that can shrink the payload, the ISP's will ALWAYS KNOW if you are doing filesharing.
If you are encrypting, then they will cut off and ask questions later. Are you as an illegal file sharer going to go to the ISP and say, "hey dude I am sharing illegal files let me."
No instead what will happen is that those that share legal files will show that they are legal and get the go ahead (that is if the ISP allows it).
I disagree with you. Apple is synonymous with smartphones. At least in the eyes of consumers. Look at it, iPhone brought in the first touch screen, and now everybody and I mean everybody is coming out with touch screens. If a manufacturer did not have touchscreen they would seem out of touch (no pun intended).
What is making the iPhone a success is its touchscreen, UI and apps. Nobody else has managed to pull off this combination this well. And Apple did one thing well with the AppStore, they made it financially attractive for developers. This is a new one for Apple. Typically OSX has not been a cash cow for third party developers. For the iPhone it definitely is.
Want to know something... Gapless playback and album art is an advance. This is what gets me with geeks and programmers. Instead of focusing on what the client wants, they focus on what they *think* the client wants.
And guess what the client wants album art... This is why Apple is a rocket and Google with its android a dud...
The day of the techie and their ueber geek arrogance is gone, they need to start delivering products clients want...
Why do we need commercial paper? Why do we need longer terms?
Banks operate in spreads and there are jolts to the spreads namely payroll, etc, etc. Thus to smooth the jolts you issue paper which gets you over those jolts in a very easy manner.
Let me illustrate. A speaker buddy had to pay a sum of money to his ex-wife. She demanded the lump sum and he did not have the money right away. He said he would have had to sell stock. So I said, do the following:
Go to the bank for 50 cents on the dollar to get a loan. Then use that loan to pay off the wife, and make payments until necessary. In other words it is all about the cash flow and utilizing the money you have.
This is not that complex actually. It is rather easy.
Why is the system fragile? Easy too much leverage. Do some history checks and it never is the instrument itself. Each and every bubble can easily be traced to people leveraging themselves. Leverage is death because with leverage you race time.
For example did you know what brought down the market in 1929? What we now call Mutual Funds! Don't believe me, read The Death of the Banker.
I find this a critique as well. For example I still can't believe that the only thing we use for propulsion is a jet engine. Where is the scram jet? Many say impractical. I say, "sure it is since you are not doing an research or progress."
For example Wolfram talks about a different sort of mathematics. One that uses computers to calculate things. Actually quite neat. Yes there are plenty of reasons why people could cut him down, and they have. Yet what are people doing otherwise? NOTHING, NADA...
It seems to me that we have entered an era of fear. You know being too far out there and not wanting to be "outside" the group. EVEN though we need "outside the group" thinkers. More than ever actually....
Bruce Eckel for a while released his books for free. And initially things went very well. But then things went downhill because people would end up NOT buying his books. They would have read his books, but not bought them.
Now Bruce is not making the later editions for free anymore. Why? I can only surmise that it did not work out. I once asked him and he said, "oh yeah that it was an interesting experiment."
I know Bruce personally and he is not a money freak. He is a very nice guy. He is in fact somebody who likes Open Source, etc. But I know he also has to feed himself and I wonder if sales did end up going down...
It actually disappoints me because Bruce was very willing and wanted to help the community. But the community let him down...
A company that makes Spore wants to earn a living. And to do that they put on DRM. Yet broadly said, "oh look the most pirated game" will only cause more DRM.
I am not one for draconian DRM, but the reality is that people pirate way too much. It seems that the current generation thinks that charging for software is a bad thing.
The thing is that you can have free software, and you can have for charge software. But when people start pirating software they are only making the case for people who break the GPL. After all free software and for charge software uses copyright laws...
I for one like both software types and respect the licenses of both software. Doing otherwise would be hypocritical...
>A good quote (from the UK Press complaints commision) is "something that is of interest to the public is not always in the public's interests".
I take offense with this comment. Yes your example is correct in legal terms, but I would argue your example and statement have nothing to do with each other. The email example is illegal regardless if you publish the emails or not.
What I think the UK press comment was getting at is if you should publish something just because the public is interested in it, even though it may be potentially harmful to somebody.
An example that comes to mind is this credit crisis. Here we have oodles and oodles of reporters talking about the market meltdown, when it would be in the best interest of the public to not make it so dramatic.
I think these reports are not helpful, but this is where balance comes to mind. We need people to take the other side and say, "hey you know what this is crazy."
Yes some bloggers spew. BUT those bloggers that are serious about their stuff, and the ones that are probably being jailed it is because they believe in freedom of speech.
The main stream media is not a media anymore. They are more interested in appeasing people than actually telling about issues. It is easy to spew about the church, or spew about governments in certain places.
The people of power have learned that they can hold reporters at bay if they feel the reporters is getting a special scoop. You know the one on one feeling. Like, "hey I will give you an interview, but here is what we need to talk about." Bloggers don't give a flying hoot and as such will say things as they are. They will say, "you know you are an idiot" because they don't want nor care about "special access."
I know that this is the real issue since it has happened quite a few times with me. Now I just don't care anymore...
Interestingly enough you are actually defeating your own argument....
You see you can connect an air conditioner so long as it has been verified to only consume so much amperage.
If you want to use an air conditioner that uses 200 Amps, you can bet your ass that the electricity company will come and visit you quite quickly. They will ask, "ok so why are you using 200 Amps?" What gives. And if you say, "none of your business", they will reply, "ooops sorry no electricity for you..."
"That's why a closed source desktop (Apple) is winning the desktop wars with an underlying base of OSS."
Sure this argument stuck around 10 years ago. But these days it is very different. Apple does not give away the secret sauce, namely the UI. If you look at the iPhone, please tell me which parts are open source?
I would argue that Apple is an excellent example of how OSS fails to make a profit.
OSX and Linux started around the same time in terms of popularity and market share. Yet nearly 10 years later RedHat is still a peanut gallery while Apple is a powerhouse.
Personally, OSS does provide great products (eg Apache), but it most definitely DOES NOT provide a business model. As much as people like to say, "oh you can sell support, or what have you" it is completely incorrect. The guy who said that it is a race to zero is completely correct.
That's why I don't actually try and compete with Open Source. I stay completely out of their way. Not worth the effort nor problems.
I find this the irony of the situation. OSX and Linux basically came out of the gate with the same amount of following. Here we are in 2008, and who has actual market share? OSX...
What that should tell everybody is that MAYBE its not about "freedom". BUT MAYBE its about getting a computer to work when it should...
I am not saying Open Source is bad. Look at Apache, PHP, and co. Those projects work and are VERY popular. Even Linux server side has more damm success.
The basis of IRR is the question would I be better off putting this money into a fixed rate return investment, or putting it to work in a project.
If the IRR indicates that I am better off putting this into a treasury or corporate bond then I don't do this project.
So here is the thing, if the project costs are (example illustration only)
100 USD to develop 20 USD per year to maintain 10 USD per year to run the business
and the life of the product is 2 years (before I need to invest again) and I want an IRR of say 8%. Then I need to earn approx 86 USD per year (base investment + return)
Of course my numbers are off because I did not calculate the discounted cash flow.
To understand this topic please get yourself the book "Valuations".
I read your argument that the price should rely solely on the cost of production. That is wrong.
When wondering about what to charge what you base it on is the internal rate of return. This determines whether or not you should invest in a project.
Scarcity or whatever else plays a role insofar that it allows you to increase or decrease your IRR. The advert model is not a means to an ends. In fact the advert model makes it very difficult to know your IRR. It is a leap of faith and in these difficult times maybe a wrong leap of faith.
This is a crap argument. When MSFT tried to buy anything or anyone people screamed bloody murder.
The government did their job and ensured that the number 1 and 2 don't get together and control the market.
When you say, "oh we will let capitalism do its work." I call BS! Because if there were true capitalism people would not be able to handle it since many things as they are today would be very very different.
I always use the hockey game comparison. Rules are there to make the game fair, not tilt it in anybody's favor. No rules, and only "free market" and what you have are brawls! Sure one person will win, but it would not be pretty and definitely not a hockey game!
The closest comparison I can come to is this really odd Irish or is it English game where they kick this thing across town and it turns into a brawl. Not pretty to watch.
The offer was for each share of Yahoo you could get up half in cash and the remainder in Microsoft stock (not 1 to 1 mind you). Since the offer was dropped, MSFT went to around 22, and YHOO went to 14. MSFT at the time was trading around 28 to 30, and YHOO well, that was 33. You would have been better off with any deal...
I live in Europe and I watched it. Then I decided to some statistical sampling (namely randomly watch it).
Guess what I found out....
These guys are Aryan nation kind of folks... I am dead serious here. Check out the number of women that are blond. You can't get away from it. Kind of scary actually...
Slashdot Mirror
>What's in it for the ISPs
Getting the freeloaders off their network.... Fileshares take quite a bit of bandwidth and if they can be kicked off, the more the merrier...
I am sorry, but this is not even close to an arms race. In fact the RIAA is pretty smart on this one.
If you use protocol X today, and the protocol Y tomorrow it is completely irrelevant, because you need to move Z bytes. Unless you managed to develop some magical protocol that can shrink the payload, the ISP's will ALWAYS KNOW if you are doing filesharing.
If you are encrypting, then they will cut off and ask questions later. Are you as an illegal file sharer going to go to the ISP and say, "hey dude I am sharing illegal files let me."
No instead what will happen is that those that share legal files will show that they are legal and get the go ahead (that is if the ISP allows it).
Nope, good move actually...
KFC - Though the ol chap passed away many years ago.
Ben and Jerry's?
Oprah
Trump
Pimco (Bill Gross)
I think there is a big list of companies actually...
I disagree with you. Apple is synonymous with smartphones. At least in the eyes of consumers. Look at it, iPhone brought in the first touch screen, and now everybody and I mean everybody is coming out with touch screens. If a manufacturer did not have touchscreen they would seem out of touch (no pun intended).
What is making the iPhone a success is its touchscreen, UI and apps. Nobody else has managed to pull off this combination this well. And Apple did one thing well with the AppStore, they made it financially attractive for developers. This is a new one for Apple. Typically OSX has not been a cash cow for third party developers. For the iPhone it definitely is.
Want to know something... Gapless playback and album art is an advance. This is what gets me with geeks and programmers. Instead of focusing on what the client wants, they focus on what they *think* the client wants.
And guess what the client wants album art... This is why Apple is a rocket and Google with its android a dud...
The day of the techie and their ueber geek arrogance is gone, they need to start delivering products clients want...
I know by us we need separate accounts for PRIVACY purposes...
Oh come on...
Here is a question do you have a mortgage or did you pay for your house UPFRONT?
What about a car? Pay for all of it upfront?
I am not saying over leverage yourself, but to say companies and businesses don't need credit is completely fool hardy.
Credit is needed in a system where you are able to make purchases in certain items. The problem is when people over leverage themselves.
Why do we need commercial paper? Why do we need longer terms?
Banks operate in spreads and there are jolts to the spreads namely payroll, etc, etc. Thus to smooth the jolts you issue paper which gets you over those jolts in a very easy manner.
Let me illustrate. A speaker buddy had to pay a sum of money to his ex-wife. She demanded the lump sum and he did not have the money right away. He said he would have had to sell stock. So I said, do the following:
Go to the bank for 50 cents on the dollar to get a loan. Then use that loan to pay off the wife, and make payments until necessary. In other words it is all about the cash flow and utilizing the money you have.
This is not that complex actually. It is rather easy.
Why is the system fragile? Easy too much leverage. Do some history checks and it never is the instrument itself. Each and every bubble can easily be traced to people leveraging themselves. Leverage is death because with leverage you race time.
For example did you know what brought down the market in 1929? What we now call Mutual Funds! Don't believe me, read The Death of the Banker.
Oh how true you are.....
I find this a critique as well. For example I still can't believe that the only thing we use for propulsion is a jet engine. Where is the scram jet? Many say impractical. I say, "sure it is since you are not doing an research or progress."
For example Wolfram talks about a different sort of mathematics. One that uses computers to calculate things. Actually quite neat. Yes there are plenty of reasons why people could cut him down, and they have. Yet what are people doing otherwise? NOTHING, NADA...
It seems to me that we have entered an era of fear. You know being too far out there and not wanting to be "outside" the group. EVEN though we need "outside the group" thinkers. More than ever actually....
All of this could have been stopped if people actually thought about buying their music...
I don't blame the music labels. Sure they can be draconian, but I don't blame them if people have no respect for copyright.
Remember copyright is what protects FOSS... That's why I am a big fan of copyright.
I got another one to prove otherwise.
Bruce Eckel for a while released his books for free. And initially things went very well. But then things went downhill because people would end up NOT buying his books. They would have read his books, but not bought them.
Now Bruce is not making the later editions for free anymore. Why? I can only surmise that it did not work out. I once asked him and he said, "oh yeah that it was an interesting experiment."
I know Bruce personally and he is not a money freak. He is a very nice guy. He is in fact somebody who likes Open Source, etc. But I know he also has to feed himself and I wonder if sales did end up going down...
It actually disappoints me because Bruce was very willing and wanted to help the community. But the community let him down...
A company that makes Spore wants to earn a living. And to do that they put on DRM. Yet broadly said, "oh look the most pirated game" will only cause more DRM.
I am not one for draconian DRM, but the reality is that people pirate way too much. It seems that the current generation thinks that charging for software is a bad thing.
The thing is that you can have free software, and you can have for charge software. But when people start pirating software they are only making the case for people who break the GPL. After all free software and for charge software uses copyright laws...
I for one like both software types and respect the licenses of both software. Doing otherwise would be hypocritical...
>A good quote (from the UK Press complaints commision) is "something that is of interest to the public is not always in the public's interests".
I take offense with this comment. Yes your example is correct in legal terms, but I would argue your example and statement have nothing to do with each other. The email example is illegal regardless if you publish the emails or not.
What I think the UK press comment was getting at is if you should publish something just because the public is interested in it, even though it may be potentially harmful to somebody.
An example that comes to mind is this credit crisis. Here we have oodles and oodles of reporters talking about the market meltdown, when it would be in the best interest of the public to not make it so dramatic.
I think these reports are not helpful, but this is where balance comes to mind. We need people to take the other side and say, "hey you know what this is crazy."
Wrong... I disagree here.
Yes some bloggers spew. BUT those bloggers that are serious about their stuff, and the ones that are probably being jailed it is because they believe in freedom of speech.
The main stream media is not a media anymore. They are more interested in appeasing people than actually telling about issues. It is easy to spew about the church, or spew about governments in certain places.
The people of power have learned that they can hold reporters at bay if they feel the reporters is getting a special scoop. You know the one on one feeling. Like, "hey I will give you an interview, but here is what we need to talk about." Bloggers don't give a flying hoot and as such will say things as they are. They will say, "you know you are an idiot" because they don't want nor care about "special access."
I know that this is the real issue since it has happened quite a few times with me. Now I just don't care anymore...
Interestingly enough you are actually defeating your own argument....
You see you can connect an air conditioner so long as it has been verified to only consume so much amperage.
If you want to use an air conditioner that uses 200 Amps, you can bet your ass that the electricity company will come and visit you quite quickly. They will ask, "ok so why are you using 200 Amps?" What gives. And if you say, "none of your business", they will reply, "ooops sorry no electricity for you..."
"In the long-term there is little doubt in my mind that that proprietary software will be mostly obselete for a number of reasons."
Do you believe your own words?
Please tell this to:
Apple, RIMM, etc...
These companies are not obsolete, nor becoming that, and they are thriving...
"That's why a closed source desktop (Apple) is winning the desktop wars with an underlying base of OSS."
Sure this argument stuck around 10 years ago. But these days it is very different. Apple does not give away the secret sauce, namely the UI. If you look at the iPhone, please tell me which parts are open source?
I would argue that Apple is an excellent example of how OSS fails to make a profit.
OSX and Linux started around the same time in terms of popularity and market share. Yet nearly 10 years later RedHat is still a peanut gallery while Apple is a powerhouse.
Personally, OSS does provide great products (eg Apache), but it most definitely DOES NOT provide a business model. As much as people like to say, "oh you can sell support, or what have you" it is completely incorrect. The guy who said that it is a race to zero is completely correct.
That's why I don't actually try and compete with Open Source. I stay completely out of their way. Not worth the effort nor problems.
I find this the irony of the situation. OSX and Linux basically came out of the gate with the same amount of following. Here we are in 2008, and who has actual market share? OSX...
What that should tell everybody is that MAYBE its not about "freedom". BUT MAYBE its about getting a computer to work when it should...
I am not saying Open Source is bad. Look at Apache, PHP, and co. Those projects work and are VERY popular. Even Linux server side has more damm success.
The GUI people need to start shifting gears...
Dude you have no clue here...
Again read about IRR (Internal Rate of Return).
The basis of IRR is the question would I be better off putting this money into a fixed rate return investment, or putting it to work in a project.
If the IRR indicates that I am better off putting this into a treasury or corporate bond then I don't do this project.
So here is the thing, if the project costs are (example illustration only)
100 USD to develop
20 USD per year to maintain
10 USD per year to run the business
and the life of the product is 2 years (before I need to invest again) and I want an IRR of say 8%. Then I need to earn approx 86 USD per year (base investment + return)
Of course my numbers are off because I did not calculate the discounted cash flow.
To understand this topic please get yourself the book "Valuations".
I read your argument that the price should rely solely on the cost of production. That is wrong.
When wondering about what to charge what you base it on is the internal rate of return. This determines whether or not you should invest in a project.
Scarcity or whatever else plays a role insofar that it allows you to increase or decrease your IRR. The advert model is not a means to an ends. In fact the advert model makes it very difficult to know your IRR. It is a leap of faith and in these difficult times maybe a wrong leap of faith.
Though please do read some econometrics books...
I don't have the iPhone, but iPod Touch. iPhone without the phone. And initially I was VERY VERY skeptical of the iPhone paradigm.
Now I am totally amazed... Apple hit this one right out of the park. I was very very critical on this topic and have said so. But I was wrong.
This is a crap argument. When MSFT tried to buy anything or anyone people screamed bloody murder.
The government did their job and ensured that the number 1 and 2 don't get together and control the market.
When you say, "oh we will let capitalism do its work." I call BS! Because if there were true capitalism people would not be able to handle it since many things as they are today would be very very different.
I always use the hockey game comparison. Rules are there to make the game fair, not tilt it in anybody's favor. No rules, and only "free market" and what you have are brawls! Sure one person will win, but it would not be pretty and definitely not a hockey game!
The closest comparison I can come to is this really odd Irish or is it English game where they kick this thing across town and it turns into a brawl. Not pretty to watch.
Huh????
The offer was for each share of Yahoo you could get up half in cash and the remainder in Microsoft stock (not 1 to 1 mind you). Since the offer was dropped, MSFT went to around 22, and YHOO went to 14. MSFT at the time was trading around 28 to 30, and YHOO well, that was 33. You would have been better off with any deal...
I am going to be blunt about Fox News...
I live in Europe and I watched it. Then I decided to some statistical sampling (namely randomly watch it).
Guess what I found out....
These guys are Aryan nation kind of folks... I am dead serious here. Check out the number of women that are blond. You can't get away from it. Kind of scary actually...
Dude you are singing to the choir here...
I am a mechanical engineer and to practice I need to show an engineering degree.
What I would want for IT is a real IT degree from accredited places. Not these Microsoft, Sun, or whatever solutions.