In my case, the business people were drawn and quartered because their management held them responsible for IT's efforts. That's a trick when they don't report to you.
Who said anything about not sharing ideas? As I've said elsewhere, people usually want to receive some benefit from their efforts. That's a l-o-n-g way from arguing that the only value inherent in an idea is what the market will pay for it. Human behavior is fuzzy. Why try to take things to the literal extreme?
From my perspective, you seem to be arguing for a revolutionary change in human society, not just adjustments to patent and copyright law. I'm sorry, but at this point in my life I don't trust revolutionaries, no matter how well intentioned.
Good grief. I've never had a reason to read Ayn Rand, and know zip about game theory. (I gave up looking for a one-size-fits-all ideology of human behavior a long time ago. None of them work and the "true believers" always resort to attempting to impose their beliefs on the poor, wretched unbelievers.)
I was just pointing out that people tend to act in what they see as their own self-interest. Sometimes that leads to altruistic behavior, sometimes it doesn't.
I'm not defending or supporting the current status of the U.S. patent and copyright systems. It seems to be in rather a mess, thanks to corporate pressure on the courts and Congress. I am, however, disagreeing with those who want to fix the problem by eliminating patents and copyrights altogether, an argument that appears frequently here. They imply or assert that invention and creation of art and entertainment would continue unabated sans a mechanism to incentivize inventors/creators by granting them temporary exclusivity. Some have argued that "true" inventors and artists create only for the sheer love of it, and that if you expect some reward you cannot, by definition, be an inventor or artist. That strikes me as being just a tad idealistic, like believing your mother would never have sex.
We usually want something in return for our efforts -- money, food, fame, praise, personal satisfaction, whatever. To believe that humans will change is, in my book, tantamount to waiting for utopia to arrive. The law can change corporate behavior, and that's a lot easier than building a perfect society.
They don't have a packaging system, as such. Apple software updates and most mainstream commercial Mac software is delivered as something called a "disk image". That's simply a batch of compressed files. Click on the icon and it opens to display the files that are inside. Typically, the application -- often a collection of files, not just a single executable -- is represented by a single icon, which you drag to the appropriate folder (almost always the "Applications" folder). That action triggers all the necesary file copying, etc.
If you choose, you can do all this via command line in OSX. Personally, I don't see the gain from that. (Apple has also tweaked the permissions on many standard Unix files and directories, to prevent disaster befalling an unwary user. In fact, by default, the root account isn't active. If you want to become root and muck about with permissions, you're free to do so, of course.)
Updates, deletions, and preservation of personal configuration files seems left up to the individual program. I'm a relative Mac newbie, so others may be a better source hee.
Apple maintains a software update facility to disberse new code and bug fixes. You can run it manully or automatically per a schedule. Works like a charm for me.
Fink is an apt-get look-alike for open source ported to OSX that gets good reviews. I've tried it just enough to know it works rather well.
Remember that a typical Mac user is unlikely to install and uninstall software at the same rate as an ethusiastic Linux user. I suspect most Mac users have no idea about "packaging systems". That's because they really don't need one.
Absent patents, there's no guarantee that the Wrights, or anyone else, would have gone to all that trouble. Patents are an incentive; lack of patents is a disincentive. The Wrights were aggressive in defending their patents, perhaps too aggressive, but they also licensed their technology.
Frankly, all this fuss about patents, copyrights, etc., on/. seems to come from folks who have just discovered that people are selfish. Corporations are using patent and copyright law to their own selfish, geedy advantage? Sure. Why would you expect otherwise. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, though.
>> Many would argue that the term "commercial artist" is nothing but an oxymoron.
You're implying that writing, creating music, etc., is some kind of mystical process engaged in by a very few indivduals informed, sporadically, by supernatural muses. In other words, you're putting "art" on an undeserved pedestal, and denying that an artist can be paid and still remain an artist. To the contrary, if an artist can't produce on a regular and sustained basis, they're just someone who had one good idea.
>> the idea that our current patent system promotes the progress of science and useful arts falls flat on its face in this day and age where greed is considered the only viable motivation for any endeavor.
Evidence? And what would you suggest to replace the patent system that would not entail inventors losing control of their inventions?
>>...only true solution is a major paradigm shift in the way western society (especially American) view the pursuit of wealth...
That's utopian. People everywhere work in their own best interest. Some societies are better than others at balancing the inevitable conflicting demands. Call that greed if you wish, but it's the way the human race works.
>> Many of the management seem to think that they shouldn't bother explaining the business end of the project to the techs...
Very true. Management often dances to the same tune. That's a signal to get out.
In my case, I spent a lot of time in a place where management did not hire or supervise the IT staff. IT lived in an independent chain of command, but most of their funding came out of management's pocket. This led to all kinds of evil wierdness, like IT people receiving promotions and awards for failed, disastrous projects, while the "business" people were drawn and quartered. Very nasty all around.
I grew up in southwest Ohio near Dayton, so had access to a lot of Wright lore. Once upon a time, I had a rare opportunity to research the Wrights at the archives at Wright State University outside Dayton. Fascinating stuff. including their personal correspondence and glass-plate originals of the famous Kitty Hawk photography. After plowing through that material, I came to the same conclusion as you. Odd pair of fellows.
One especially compelling piece of material was the advertising pamphlet they prepared after returning to Dayton. A well done, color, presentation of several variations of their original biplane. The selling price, I believe, was $5000. They'd sell you flying lessons, too.
There's also a beer-drinking song penned by the brothers locked away in the archives.:-)
With rare exception, it's always been about the "moola". Expecting to benefit from your work isn't greed. It's normal human behavior. Commercial artists, musicians and writers are in it for the money. That's what the word "commercial" means. Ditto people we call "inventors".
The idea behind patents and copyrights is to encourage the development of new inventions and new art in return for a degree of protection and exclusivity. You might call that "greed", but I don't. The notion that art and invention are the result of flashes of inspiration that come to altruistic people is wrong. It takes hard work and money, even if someone did have a legitimate "bright idea". Sometimes it takes the resources beyond the capacity of a single person. Even Michelango needed money.
As a former sort-of-exective-with-a-clue, I'd say the approach should be to make sure you can explain to management, in lay terms, why your solution is best. Demonstrate you understand the business by explaining how your plans will resolve their problems. Remember, they're looking for the best business decision, not necessarily the optimum technical solution. Yes, sometimes management won't listen, but give it your best shot. (And, don't speak in "us" and "them" terms. That just convinces management you really don't want to be there.)
I've sat through hundreds of briefings, watching the IT crew make their pitch with a combination of "magic happens here" and "you need to be an engineer to understand this". That's bogus. Rather, the IT folks don't know how -- or can't be bothered -- to explain things in plain English. You better believe that the management folks sitting across the table see this as condescendingly elitist and leave the room in a distrustful mood, convinced that the engineers are scamming them. Once that happens, the atmosphere is poisoned.
...why Orville and Wilbur should have gone to all that trouble and then just given it all away? If you invest years of effort, labor, and money in creating something that didn't previously exist, why aren't you entitled to reap the benefits?
Legitimate issues with software patents and digital media copyrights have fostered the projection of the free software/open source "philosophy" onto society as a whole. That's utopian. This "philosophy" works in the specific egalitarian sub-culture that emerged around Unix. It won't work in any environment in which people plan on controlling the results of their efforts in order to maximize their gain. In other words, any human environment populated with something other than comfortable, well-fed saints.
Sticking a frozen dinner in the microwave is easier than cooking dinner yourself, too. I can cook, so my food tastes better.
It's difficult to understand the emphasis on packaging systems. It seems, sadly, to be the most important factor differentiating one Linux distribution from another. Aren't they just necessary bandages to patch over the lack of adherence to standard libraries and file systems?
I've used RPM's, apt-get, Slack's tgz's, Gentoo's portage and FreeBSD's ports. They all are great if you work only within the packaging system. Start installing outside the packaging system and, sooner or later, something will break. Happened to me every time. You can try to prevent this by tracking and recording where all the files go, plus their versioning info. But, if you're going to do that, why bother with a packaging system?
This strikes me as a bit of a fuss by prima donna developers. If I can take the KDE source and muck about with it, why can't RedHat?
Asserting tht RedHat is trying to "neutralize" KDE is attributing political motives to their actions. Instead, I think, they're simply trying to sell more copies of RedHat Linux.
Agree. Dvorak correctly points to the greed of the recording industry, identifies this as a distribution issue and avoids the trap of considering the fuss as some millennial struggle about copyright doctrine.
Frankly, those who insist that this is a fuss about copyright, rather than money, by simply asserting their right to copy and distribute commercial recordings when and where they choose, copyright be damned, are playing into the hands of the recording industry. The recording industry wants this to be seen as a a life-or-death battle for the survival of copyright itself. It isn't. It's a fuss about getting the U.S. legal system to adjust the language and interpretation of copyright law in order to come to terms with new technological capabilities. Eventually, this will happen. But, if the recording industry is able to portray the other side as opponents of copyright and proponents of "stealing" digital media, then the adjustment will likely be expensive and draconian, affecting everyone's ability to use the net freely and openly.
Memory fades, but -- reportedly -- someone at Network Solutions in Herndon loaded the wrong, or bad, DNS tape a few years ago. So, for the better part of a day, lots of helpless little packets went to the wrong place.
Anyone know if there's some truth in this, or is it another myth of the Internet?
OEone might turn out to be the slickest piece of software ever written, but that won't sell it.
The biggest mistake/. readers and many Linux supporters make is assuming everyone else shares their enthusiasm for change. They don't. People want to stay with the comfortable and familiar. The discomfort of learning new ways to do old things mitigates against widespread adoption of new software.
I hope OEone is compelling enough to counter that inertia. Linux needs it.
Your mother's not alone in making that "mistake". After all, it is called the World Wide Web.
When you have a choice, not using the "www" convention might be considered tantamount to bad interface design.
AOL's keyword navigation system means users don't have to understand domain structure and URL's. Frankly, I can't think of a reason why users should need to understand that, anymore than they need to know how a cathode ray tube works before they can watch television.
Apple will switch to a new chip when the PPC line no longer delivers what they need. First scenario: the chips don't keep up with the demands of future Mac operating systems, in terms of capability or speed. Second scenario: Apple's production rate outstrips the PPC production rate. I.e., they can't buy enough chips.
Neither of these conditions appear to apply now. That can change, though.
Mitigating against a chip switch in the near future: 1) Alienation of existing Apple customers. No one is happy when their hardware and sofftware is threatened with obsolesence. 2) Moving Apple developers to a new architecture. Apple isn't finished moving developers -- big and small -- to Cocoa. Abandoning Cocoa anytime in the next few years would risk loss of many independent developers.
Meanwhile, stop fantsizing about running an OS X on you $600 AMD boxes. Apple won't position itself as a direct competitor to Microsoft in the OS market. (And, Microsoft won't start selling a version of Windows that runs on the Mac.) Apple is in business to sell hardware. They write software to give people a reason to buy that hardware. For its part, Microsoft seems convinced that they can make money selling Office into the Mac market.
I was focusing on the phrase "preventing the owner of the system from using it as he sees fit". If you already own a piece of hardware, changing future specs won't limit your existing capabilities unless, in this case, MS keeps you from playing games written to the new specs, which would be senseless on their part.
"Security" is, in fact, misused here, but we can expect MS marketing to play the security card in just about every press release from now on.
>>...MS does not want anyone but MS makeing (sic) changes to the Xbox. Sounds like more closed source to me.
Does that surprise you? Why would you think the Xbox is anything but a closed source, proprietary platform? MS can do whatever they want with it. If you don't like the changes, you can complain, but MS cares about the game revenue the box generates (which is why it exists in the first place).
By the way, I don't see this as a conspiracy. Where're the other conspirators?
You can do what you wish with the box you own now. Ditto the next one you buy, but it may be a bit more limiting. From the MS point of view, the box itself is just a way to get you to buy more games. If they don't make money from the games, they have no reason to market the boxes.
Any manufacturer can change the specs on a product any time they wish. It might be a smart thing to do or it might be stupid thing to do, but it happens all the time.
Janis is a singer/songwriter who first came to our attention in the sixties. The music and recording industry didn't begin last Thursday; taking a look at its history might provide a bit of perspective.
Back in the last century, I lived in the UK for a few years. Music CD's were priced pretty much at a pound-to-dollar rate. I.e., if it cost 18 dollars in the States, it cost 18 pounds in the UK. When I was there, the pound was selling for about $1.60, so that's a substantial markup. Caused a bit of a fuss in the mainstream press, too.
By the way, software seemed to follow the same pricing formula. Never could figure out why.:-)
In many cases, you will take a hit in next year's budget if you come in under-budget this year. That's especially true if you delivered the goods anyway. But, managers propose their own budgets, which get reviewed, amended, and approved by other managers. So, all things being equal, unspent funds at the end of the year is often a telling indicator of bad budget building all around.
If the shortfall is identified early and if it can be shifted to another project, at least the company or agency will not lose it. But, it all flows up the hierarchy -- woe to the mid-level guy who causes his boss to take a hit in his budget next year.
Slashdot Mirror
In my case, the business people were drawn and quartered because their management held them responsible for IT's efforts. That's a trick when they don't report to you.
Who said anything about not sharing ideas? As I've said elsewhere, people usually want to receive some benefit from their efforts. That's a l-o-n-g way from arguing that the only value inherent in an idea is what the market will pay for it. Human behavior is fuzzy. Why try to take things to the literal extreme?
From my perspective, you seem to be arguing for a revolutionary change in human society, not just adjustments to patent and copyright law. I'm sorry, but at this point in my life I don't trust revolutionaries, no matter how well intentioned.
Good grief. I've never had a reason to read Ayn Rand, and know zip about game theory. (I gave up looking for a one-size-fits-all ideology of human behavior a long time ago. None of them work and the "true believers" always resort to attempting to impose their beliefs on the poor, wretched unbelievers.)
I was just pointing out that people tend to act in what they see as their own self-interest. Sometimes that leads to altruistic behavior, sometimes it doesn't.
I'm not defending or supporting the current status of the U.S. patent and copyright systems. It seems to be in rather a mess, thanks to corporate pressure on the courts and Congress. I am, however, disagreeing with those who want to fix the problem by eliminating patents and copyrights altogether, an argument that appears frequently here. They imply or assert that invention and creation of art and entertainment would continue unabated sans a mechanism to incentivize inventors/creators by granting them temporary exclusivity. Some have argued that "true" inventors and artists create only for the sheer love of it, and that if you expect some reward you cannot, by definition, be an inventor or artist. That strikes me as being just a tad idealistic, like believing your mother would never have sex.
We usually want something in return for our efforts -- money, food, fame, praise, personal satisfaction, whatever. To believe that humans will change is, in my book, tantamount to waiting for utopia to arrive. The law can change corporate behavior, and that's a lot easier than building a perfect society.
They don't have a packaging system, as such. Apple software updates and most mainstream commercial Mac software is delivered as something called a "disk image". That's simply a batch of compressed files. Click on the icon and it opens to display the files that are inside. Typically, the application -- often a collection of files, not just a single executable -- is represented by a single icon, which you drag to the appropriate folder (almost always the "Applications" folder). That action triggers all the necesary file copying, etc.
If you choose, you can do all this via command line in OSX. Personally, I don't see the gain from that. (Apple has also tweaked the permissions on many standard Unix files and directories, to prevent disaster befalling an unwary user. In fact, by default, the root account isn't active. If you want to become root and muck about with permissions, you're free to do so, of course.)
Updates, deletions, and preservation of personal configuration files seems left up to the individual program. I'm a relative Mac newbie, so others may be a better source hee.
Apple maintains a software update facility to disberse new code and bug fixes. You can run it manully or automatically per a schedule. Works like a charm for me.
Fink is an apt-get look-alike for open source ported to OSX that gets good reviews. I've tried it just enough to know it works rather well.
Remember that a typical Mac user is unlikely to install and uninstall software at the same rate as an ethusiastic Linux user. I suspect most Mac users have no idea about "packaging systems". That's because they really don't need one.
Absent patents, there's no guarantee that the Wrights, or anyone else, would have gone to all that trouble. Patents are an incentive; lack of patents is a disincentive. The Wrights were aggressive in defending their patents, perhaps too aggressive, but they also licensed their technology.
/. seems to come from folks who have just discovered that people are selfish. Corporations are using patent and copyright law to their own selfish, geedy advantage? Sure. Why would you expect otherwise. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, though.
Frankly, all this fuss about patents, copyrights, etc., on
>> Many would argue that the term "commercial artist" is nothing but an oxymoron.
...only true solution is a major paradigm shift in the way western society (especially American) view the pursuit of wealth...
You're implying that writing, creating music, etc., is some kind of mystical process engaged in by a very few indivduals informed, sporadically, by supernatural muses. In other words, you're putting "art" on an undeserved pedestal, and denying that an artist can be paid and still remain an artist. To the contrary, if an artist can't produce on a regular and sustained basis, they're just someone who had one good idea.
>> the idea that our current patent system promotes the progress of science and useful arts falls flat on its face in this day and age where greed is considered the only viable motivation for any endeavor.
Evidence? And what would you suggest to replace the patent system that would not entail inventors losing control of their inventions?
>>
That's utopian. People everywhere work in their own best interest. Some societies are better than others at balancing the inevitable conflicting demands. Call that greed if you wish, but it's the way the human race works.
>> Many of the management seem to think that they shouldn't bother explaining the business end of the project to the techs...
Very true. Management often dances to the same tune. That's a signal to get out.
In my case, I spent a lot of time in a place where management did not hire or supervise the IT staff. IT lived in an independent chain of command, but most of their funding came out of management's pocket. This led to all kinds of evil wierdness, like IT people receiving promotions and awards for failed, disastrous projects, while the "business" people were drawn and quartered. Very nasty all around.
I grew up in southwest Ohio near Dayton, so had access to a lot of Wright lore. Once upon a time, I had a rare opportunity to research the Wrights at the archives at Wright State University outside Dayton. Fascinating stuff. including their personal correspondence and glass-plate originals of the famous Kitty Hawk photography. After plowing through that material, I came to the same conclusion as you. Odd pair of fellows.
:-)
One especially compelling piece of material was the advertising pamphlet they prepared after returning to Dayton. A well done, color, presentation of several variations of their original biplane. The selling price, I believe, was $5000. They'd sell you flying lessons, too.
There's also a beer-drinking song penned by the brothers locked away in the archives.
With rare exception, it's always been about the "moola". Expecting to benefit from your work isn't greed. It's normal human behavior. Commercial artists, musicians and writers are in it for the money. That's what the word "commercial" means. Ditto people we call "inventors".
The idea behind patents and copyrights is to encourage the development of new inventions and new art in return for a degree of protection and exclusivity. You might call that "greed", but I don't. The notion that art and invention are the result of flashes of inspiration that come to altruistic people is wrong. It takes hard work and money, even if someone did have a legitimate "bright idea". Sometimes it takes the resources beyond the capacity of a single person. Even Michelango needed money.
As a former sort-of-exective-with-a-clue, I'd say the approach should be to make sure you can explain to management, in lay terms, why your solution is best. Demonstrate you understand the business by explaining how your plans will resolve their problems. Remember, they're looking for the best business decision, not necessarily the optimum technical solution. Yes, sometimes management won't listen, but give it your best shot. (And, don't speak in "us" and "them" terms. That just convinces management you really don't want to be there.)
I've sat through hundreds of briefings, watching the IT crew make their pitch with a combination of "magic happens here" and "you need to be an engineer to understand this". That's bogus. Rather, the IT folks don't know how -- or can't be bothered -- to explain things in plain English. You better believe that the management folks sitting across the table see this as condescendingly elitist and leave the room in a distrustful mood, convinced that the engineers are scamming them. Once that happens, the atmosphere is poisoned.
...why Orville and Wilbur should have gone to all that trouble and then just given it all away? If you invest years of effort, labor, and money in creating something that didn't previously exist, why aren't you entitled to reap the benefits?
Legitimate issues with software patents and digital media copyrights have fostered the projection of the free software/open source "philosophy" onto society as a whole. That's utopian. This "philosophy" works in the specific egalitarian sub-culture that emerged around Unix. It won't work in any environment in which people plan on controlling the results of their efforts in order to maximize their gain. In other words, any human environment populated with something other than comfortable, well-fed saints.
Sticking a frozen dinner in the microwave is easier than cooking dinner yourself, too. I can cook, so my food tastes better.
It's difficult to understand the emphasis on packaging systems. It seems, sadly, to be the most important factor differentiating one Linux distribution from another. Aren't they just necessary bandages to patch over the lack of adherence to standard libraries and file systems?
I've used RPM's, apt-get, Slack's tgz's, Gentoo's portage and FreeBSD's ports. They all are great if you work only within the packaging system. Start installing outside the packaging system and, sooner or later, something will break.
Happened to me every time. You can try to prevent this by tracking and recording where all the files go, plus their versioning info. But, if you're going to do that, why bother with a packaging system?
This strikes me as a bit of a fuss by prima donna developers. If I can take the KDE source and muck about with it, why can't RedHat?
Asserting tht RedHat is trying to "neutralize" KDE is attributing political motives to their actions. Instead, I think, they're simply trying to sell more copies of RedHat Linux.
Frankly, those who insist that this is a fuss about copyright, rather than money, by simply asserting their right to copy and distribute commercial recordings when and where they choose, copyright be damned, are playing into the hands of the recording industry. The recording industry wants this to be seen as a a life-or-death battle for the survival of copyright itself. It isn't. It's a fuss about getting the U.S. legal system to adjust the language and interpretation of copyright law in order to come to terms with new technological capabilities. Eventually, this will happen. But, if the recording industry is able to portray the other side as opponents of copyright and proponents of "stealing" digital media, then the adjustment will likely be expensive and draconian, affecting everyone's ability to use the net freely and openly.
Memory fades, but -- reportedly -- someone at Network Solutions in Herndon loaded the wrong, or bad, DNS tape a few years ago. So, for the better part of a day, lots of helpless little packets went to the wrong place.
Anyone know if there's some truth in this, or is it another myth of the Internet?
OEone might turn out to be the slickest piece of software ever written, but that won't sell it.
/. readers and many Linux supporters make is assuming everyone else shares their enthusiasm for change. They don't. People want to stay with the comfortable and familiar. The discomfort of learning new ways to do old things mitigates against widespread adoption of new software.
The biggest mistake
I hope OEone is compelling enough to counter that inertia. Linux needs it.
Your mother's not alone in making that "mistake". After all, it is called the World Wide Web.
When you have a choice, not using the "www" convention might be considered tantamount to bad interface design.
AOL's keyword navigation system means users don't have to understand domain structure and URL's. Frankly, I can't think of a reason why users should need to understand that, anymore than they need to know how a cathode ray tube works before they can watch television.
Apple will switch to a new chip when the PPC line no longer delivers what they need. First scenario: the chips don't keep up with the demands of future Mac operating systems, in terms of capability or speed. Second scenario: Apple's production rate outstrips the PPC production rate. I.e., they can't buy enough chips.
Neither of these conditions appear to apply now. That can change, though.
Mitigating against a chip switch in the near future: 1) Alienation of existing Apple customers. No one is happy when their hardware and sofftware is threatened with obsolesence. 2) Moving Apple developers to a new architecture. Apple isn't finished moving developers -- big and small -- to Cocoa. Abandoning Cocoa anytime in the next few years would risk loss of many independent developers.
Meanwhile, stop fantsizing about running an OS X on you $600 AMD boxes. Apple won't position itself as a direct competitor to Microsoft in the OS market. (And, Microsoft won't start selling a version of Windows that runs on the Mac.) Apple is in business to sell hardware. They write software to give people a reason to buy that hardware. For its part, Microsoft seems convinced that they can make money selling Office into the Mac market.
I was focusing on the phrase "preventing the owner of the system from using it as he sees fit". If you already own a piece of hardware, changing future specs won't limit your existing capabilities unless, in this case, MS keeps you from playing games written to the new specs, which would be senseless on their part. "Security" is, in fact, misused here, but we can expect MS marketing to play the security card in just about every press release from now on.
>> ...MS does not want anyone but MS makeing (sic) changes to the Xbox. Sounds like more closed source to me.
Does that surprise you? Why would you think the Xbox is anything but a closed source, proprietary platform? MS can do whatever they want with it. If you don't like the changes, you can complain, but MS cares about the game revenue the box generates (which is why it exists in the first place).
By the way, I don't see this as a conspiracy. Where're the other conspirators?
You can do what you wish with the box you own now. Ditto the next one you buy, but it may be a bit more limiting. From the MS point of view, the box itself is just a way to get you to buy more games. If they don't make money from the games, they have no reason to market the boxes.
Any manufacturer can change the specs on a product any time they wish. It might be a smart thing to do or it might be stupid thing to do, but it happens all the time.
Sorry, Junks. whoever you are. Clicked on the wrong "reply" link.
Janis is a singer/songwriter who first came to our attention in the sixties. The music and recording industry didn't begin last Thursday; taking a look at its history might provide a bit of perspective.
Back in the last century, I lived in the UK for a few years. Music CD's were priced pretty much at a pound-to-dollar rate. I.e., if it cost 18 dollars in the States, it cost 18 pounds in the UK. When I was there, the pound was selling for about $1.60, so that's a substantial markup. Caused a bit of a fuss in the mainstream press, too.
:-)
By the way, software seemed to follow the same pricing formula. Never could figure out why.
In many cases, you will take a hit in next year's budget if you come in under-budget this year. That's especially true if you delivered the goods anyway. But, managers propose their own budgets, which get reviewed, amended, and approved by other managers. So, all things being equal, unspent funds at the end of the year is often a telling indicator of bad budget building all around.
If the shortfall is identified early and if it can be shifted to another project, at least the company or agency will not lose it. But, it all flows up the hierarchy -- woe to the mid-level guy who causes his boss to take a hit in his budget next year.