Thanks for calling me usually reasonable -- that's rare:) I even think I am unreasonable at times, ha.
In comment to your post, it looks like the market fixed what many people here think was broken. People realized that the original CDDB didn't really promise not to use the information and lock it down, so the market provided a second product that DOES promise not to lock it down.
To me, that's the free market at work. If I take all the slashdot posts (let's pretend that copyright doesn't exist) and "lock them down" by buying out slashdot, how fast do you think someone would put a new slashdot up, and promise not to resell the information or lock it down? I'd say nearly instantly. Yes, some past information, maybe a lot, might be locked down forever, but is there value in that old stuff? Was there value in what people gave to CDDB that couldn't be replaced in a new open system?
Problem solved, by the market, not by the law. Love it.
So, that's a yes then. And there's no such thing as anarcho-capitalism. That would properly be called libertarianism.
Libertarians are Statists who want smaller government or more local government. Anarcho-capitalists are either Voluntaryists who believe in a voluntary society or Unanimocrats who believe in unanimocracy -- they both believe in 100% voluntary affiliations. Both are anarcho-capitalists: they believe in no use of force (the State) and the ability to use your hands, mind and property to better yourself as long as you directly harm no one else's hands, mind or property.
I first went to a private clinic in Warsaw. The wait for free health care for my fever was about 3 weeks. The private clinic cost me about US$25, and the doctor said I should just stay in bed for a week and take some pills. I had a flight to India that was not cancelable, which I had to cancel (cost me about US$3000) but I traveled a few days later because I felt better. Then the REAL fever hit, heh.
People are talking a lot about the quantity initially available, etc, but the product is also gaining attention because of positive features such as the Blue Ray drive and other hardware (CELL?).
The 60GB hard drive version can be purchased, so you'll see information on it right now.
First the site will discuss all the basic information of the product, and then go into detail on each section.
1. The package is heavy. 2. Here is the list of contents in the package. 3. Here's a picture of the box open 4. Here is a list of what comes with the package. 5. Here's a picture of the back. 6. Here's a picture of the left. 7. Here's a picture of the right. 8. Here's the memory card reader. 9. You can access the HDD slot. 10. Here's the 60GB Seagate hard drive.
Note When dissassemblnig the product, you lose the manufacturer's warranty. The PC Watch editorial staff is not responsible for any damage that my might occur if you take apart your model. It will damage the unit.
The editors of PC Watch will not answer any questions submitted about taking apart the product.
More photos:
1. The warning seal is similar to the PS2 2. When the seal is peeled off, "VOID" becomes visible. 3. Under the warning seal is a special screw which must be removed to get the cover off. 4. When you remove the large screw, the cover can be opened. 5. The cable which is connected to the cover goes to the memory card reader. 6. Removing the case shows you the BD drive and power supply. 7. Look at the power supply. It is a direct 100V power supply. The power supply is small. 8. The baseplate on the front side of the power supply is likely for separating the wireless networking from the power supply, along with the necessary cables. 9. When the BD drive, power supply and wireless networking system is removed, you can see the motherboard seal and the heatsink. 10. The the bottom of the case is removed, you can see the huge cooling fan who is not visible from outside the case. 11. Difference angle of the cooling fan. There is approximately 16cm of contact area for the fan. 12. You can see the fins for the heatsink and cooling system. 13. The cooling fan removed. 14. The heatsink removed, you can see the cooling piping. 15. Here's the motherboard top. 16. Here's the motherboard bottom. 17. Here are for big chips. The leftmost side is probably for the PS software emulation. 18. The next chip is the graphics chipset. 19. Under the seal of the graphics chipset, we see 4 chips. 20. The graphics memory is made by Samsung 21. The right most chip is a Sony CXD2973GB. 22. Not sure what this says, but it is connected with a lot of wires.
It is possible that I am a shill, but I have ALWAYS said why I come to slashdot: for personal gain in information and to promote the foundations of anarcho-capitalism to an audience that seems to be listening (looking at the growth of pro-free market techies here).
I'm NOT a millionaire -- I live in a mobile home, I drive a 96 Toyota Corolla, and I reinvest almost all my profits into new risky ventures or into ventures for others. But I may LIVE like a millionaire because my cost of living is about 80% lower than people who do the same work I do, so I am theoretically 400% richer in time value. If you and I make US$100,000 a year (let's just throw that number out) and it costs you $50,000 a year to live, plus US$40,000 in taxes at all levels, and it costs me US$10,000 a year to live plus $40,000 in taxes at all levels, you have US$10,000 a year to grow on, whereas I have US$50,000. That is an apples-to-apples comparison. If you all-of-a-sudden make US$1 million a year, after taxes and similar "now I'm wealthy I can buy more" costs, you probably won't have much more than I do making 10% of your new income. Thrift and time preference is key to being stable, not wealth. I still get that US$40,000 per year robbed from me in taxes, otherwise I could work less and do more.
Even if I am a shill, who cares? The ideas that we're all debating and discussing have value, so who cares if Microsoft or CmdrTaco give me early access than anyone else and pay me to promote my ideas? Some people here gain from the shared knowledge of the debates.
The black market is a great function for society in India versus society in the U.S. In India, the bureacracy is so corrupt already that people are rarely afraid of the law. If you pay a significant sum in black market dollars, you'll likely also pay some money to the law to keep them out of the process.
All forms of taxes come from a cost-benefit analysis, even if you don't realize you're doing it. In India, people KNOW their government is worthless, so they only give just enough in white market money to keep the law off their backs. It adds a stamp of State-officialness to pay SOME taxes, but the black market provides much more benefit for the costs involved. Is there risk? Sure. Is there corruption in the black market? Only because the law says it is corrupt -- most Indians gain much more out of the black market of competition than the white market of Statism and monopoly.
I'm going back to India in December (and then to Uganda and possibly Bulgaria) to see the changes made for a few businesses I invested in back in March. I gave a few poor entrepreneurs the equivalent of a few thousands US dollars total, and I already know they've grown way beyond what they'd do if they were in the States or in Western Europe. I didn't "invest" in them, I just gave them money to learn from where they'll go. Maybe some threw it away, maybe some invested it in their own businesses, maybe some gambled it on the lottery. As far as I know, though, all of them have turned it around into something remarkable.
My corporation has one of its locations in Mumbai, India (17 Napean Sea Road, in the Motilal Mansion, for those Indians who are reading this), where I stay when I am visiting. That area is amazing to me -- mansions, shacks, stores everywhere, new Mercedes riding alongside cattle in the roads. Anarchy, but no chaos. Amazing.
A. I type very, very fast (learned to type in 1978 at the age of 4) on a Commodore PET. B. I write for a living -- thousands of words a day, generally. C. I take notice of Slashdot articles that are pertinent to my future, such as this one. D. I can write long-winded and fairly accurate articles in minutes, a little longer if I need to add sources.
Not so difficult, really. I have a long history of +5 first posts only because of how I browse slashdot (RSS link to my subscriber account). Love this site because of the interesting replies, so why not get in early to get the best replies, right? Karma means nothing -- I've honestly thought of just posting anonymously (which I have done often enough when I am accused of karma whoring).
Exactly. I "read" slashdot through my RSS newsreader, so I don't really pay attention to whether or not something is publicly visible or not. When I see something that is interesting, and if I have a few minutes to throw some notes up, I'll create my reply and send it -- usually by the time I finish my reply it is already live so it works well.
I'm sort of surprised how often I'll get a first post, though, even though I'm not looking for it. Where are the other subscribers? Maybe they don't read via RSS and get the article instantly when it is posted for subscribers to see.
I thought slashdot was letting non-subscribers see posts early if they looked at ads or something, did that remove that?
Social services in India are a joke -- the black market provides much more for the poor at a cheaper price. I got a terrible high fever in Europe (over 104) and was treated perfectly by an Indian doctor in a black market-type clinic. I paid cash (Rupees) and I couldn't believe how little they asked for the help. Would I get surgery in that clinic? I doubt it. But the fever was treated professionally, in a clean atmosphere, with no wait time. I saw enough poor people in that same clinic and in talking to them realized that there were numerous doctors who ran inexpensive clinics for everyone. The biggest dilemma was the social services officials who jailed (and possibly killed, alledgely) the black market clinics that competed with the terrible free ones.
As for extreme poverty, I saw a lot of poor people doing what they needed to do to get out of that situation -- caused by the high taxes and tyranny that existed within the socialist schemes. Some poor people recycled what they found in the trash (one lady we met with in a poor area actually bought her house by recycling water bottles over 10 years). Some poor people sold coconuts to tourists (very lucrative at 25 cents per coconut). Some poor people did horrific things -- but I've seen indebted Americans do horrific things, too. Overall, I saw people with their eyes glistening for opportunity rather than what I see in my own country -- poor people who submit to the State to take care of everything.
I was just in India this year (Spring 2006) for almost a month on a tour of Eastern Europe and Western India. The primary focus of the trip was to see how gold bullion affected areas with poverty and reduced labor. I was shocked at the competitive and relatively free market of India -- I also saw why so many people were gaining wealth and blowing open the tech community -- they were driven versus what I am familiar with in the States.
That being said, I don't think Ballmer was wrong to dance around the question. I think his answer hit the nail, head on!
Background on information and "free": When I ran my first multinode BBS starting in 1987, I saw that the future was something similar to client-server (the Internet never dawned on me at this point). My BBS was a pay-for-play gaming system, and people paid in order to connect and use the software that I 'rented' them via their ANSI terminal application. I saw how huge the future would be if the bandwidth could get beyond 2400 bps. I'm seeing that future today with things as simple as Wordpress and Google Spreadsheet. It blows my mind, and I do see how Microsoft wouldn't care about free software because it isn't on their radar screen. I don't know of much free software that is really competitive because truly free software doesn't have the support that it needs to compete with software that does have support. I'd rather see ad-bloated "free" software like Google Mail than bug-ridden memory-leaking software like Thunderbird. I use Firefox, but it is still a memory leaker that competes well with IE in terms of falling apart over a few hours of work.
The Indians will want nothing to do with it. India has a history of thousands of years of being capitalists -- only recently did we really see socialism take over, and it is starting to be pushed out by the millions who want to better their own lives and try to ignore what is best for "society" when they all know that the rest of society is made of individuals who also want to be better than them. The fact that India is growing in leaps and bounds comes because of the hard-driven individualistic atmosphere that exists in that country and seems to be in their blood (note: I have East Indian blood in me, but I am a mutt).
The Indians are already grasping the idea of advertising-funded online media, so maybe the next step is some sort of "use it for free" software -- but we all have to see that paid software seems to be better supported that truly free software. I love Google Mail, but it isn't free -- the ads displayed on the screen are paying for supporting the application developers. Americans tend to be anti-advertising, but the West Asian part of the world is definitely not -- when I was in India, I saw entire houses painted by a corporation to be their logo and color (the owner of the home was paid nicely for allowing it). I saw taxis driving around with vinyl-cut ads from every sort of retailer, small and large. I saw how heavily the "Bollywood-style" advertisements cluttered the mainstream media there. The Indians aren't afraid of finding a way to make money on everything they can -- in order to better their own lives without a big expense to anyone else.
The entire Indian economy is run in a balanced Statist-Anarchist way. If you buy anything large (car, house, land, business) you pay a small portion of "white" money (that is heavily taxed) and a big portion of "black" money (that is under the table, and often comes in the form of bullion). That's awesome -- people realize what a burden the State is, and they work around it. The same will be true of the "free" software drive there -- people will realize that they can gain without causing other people to lose -- by finding a way to subsidize whatever the future is of the software market.
Some Americans care about Open Source because they're anti-corporation, but that isn't the reason for Open Source, not really. Open Source and free software both come out of supply and demand: there is always a demand for som
There's a lesson to be learned -- when you share your information, expect others to take advantage of it if they can find a way to make a gain that doesn't hurt you. You admit you spent a whopping 5 minutes submitting something for others to use. Someone decided to use it. The information that you submitted is probably still there in FreeDB, or was perfected by someone else. It doesn't go away.
Gracenote decided they had to move CDDB from a public resource to a private one because the demand dictated it. If they left it up to the public, it would wither away from a competitor -- and then all your "hard work" would be gone. Your information is still helping the public (how many of us pay directly to use Gracenote), but now someone is charging in order to keep that information there for as long as there is demand for it.
If you wrote free e-books that anyone else could write in 5 minutes, and someone hosted them and then said "we have so much demand that we have to charge for downloads" would you rather have your e-book deleted forever, or have it still exist and have someone charge for the services they provide -- the ongoing labors that are worth money, not the one-time-gimme-money mentality of the pro-copyright crowd. (Note, the e-book isn't a just comparison, but I'm simplifying it)
I've never really understood why people are angry at GraceNote. If you put information out into the world, expect others to copy it. Expect some to take it and make it profitable. Expect someone to get some gain out of it that you might not be able to or even want.
Yes, there are various State-run ways to try to protect content or ideas (copyright, trademarks, patent, etc). These are useless for everyone but the ultra-powerful who can afford to litigate copyright infringement. Don't believe me? Try to battle someone copying your music, art or words.
My own sites ALL repudiate copyright -- I release it into the public domain, and even tell people to stick their own name on it. I make my profit two ways: I gain incredible information from the replies on slashdot or on my blogs or forums (that's free information from you to me), and I leverage that information into my "real life" of consulting and speaking engagements.
If you reply on slashdot, theoretically you own the content of your post. But how many people take your post and use it to form their own opinion? Who owns the newly formed opinions? In my mind, no one, ever. Sure, you may have submitted some CD information to CDDB, but who is to say that the information is unique to you -- and even if it was, who cares what CDDB did with it if you gave it away freely. Even if you put a restriction on it, how are you going to stop CDDB from changing its business model? If Linux all-of-a-sudden was ripped off completely by a big company and sold commercially, how would you fight it? With what funds?
What Grace Note did might seem mean or wrong, but I don't see a problem with it. People volunteer information for free all the time (see slashdot or any blog's comments). Other people use this and work hard to find value out of that information for others. It is the continued labor of working that is valuable to the market, not the one-time work that someone hopes to make repeated profits on.
I wouldn't want you to do MY taxes since you didn't seem to read my post. The Income Tax itself is not a significant tax base -- the poor actually do pay less/get money back. I'm talking about FICA (try getting a deducation for that), property tax, sales tax, Medicare, unemployment, FICA employer shared, unemployment employer share, Medicare employer share, gas tax, communications taxes, energy taxes and surcharges, tariffs, etc, etc, etc.
If you don't believe me, start writing things down in your own life. You'll throw your hands up in disbelief after only 2 pay periods, when the percentages of your gross income are cut in half by gross incompetence of the taxing bodies. Oh, and don't forget to include the ~8% employer share on your FICA that you'd get in a free market.
I'm not sure that removing publicly funded schools is the answer either. Who would pay for the kids in poor areas where most parents can barely pay for rent and food, let alone education? Removing the public funds would take us back to an era where poor children had little or no education, couldn't read or write, and were destined for back breaking manual labor which they didn't even have the education/smarts to object to. The opportunities afforded these children by publicly funded schools are phenomenal when compared to having no education at all.
I've been through this debate before, too many times.
The average household in the U.S. pays over 50% of its gross income to taxes at every level -- and rarely getting any equivalent return. The poor are especially affected by tax rate since they have few to no write-offs. We're not talking income taxes, here, which few of us actually pay in significant amount. We're talking about all the other taxes (including the portion of their rent which goes to the landlord's property taxes). If you earn only US$15,000 per year, you're likely paying over US$9,000 in all the various taxes (including your employer's ~8% FICA matches).
When the poor are so heavily taxes, the poor have fewer choices. We all could do more for ourselves if we were not taxed so heavily. Go back 30 years and the household tax rate was under 15%, and I believe under 8% a decade or two before that. Any wonder that both parents have to work today?
Give everyone back their hard-earned money, don't steal the additional 8% FICA and you'll see the poor in a competitive advantage to make better decisions. On top of that, the poor also pay their property tax portion for life just like we all do, which could total tens of thousands or more over their lifetimes -- enough to let them invest in their children's children.
Really? The U.S. has one of the worst public education systems in the world, but the college system is a competitive one in terms of choice, and we have a fairly exceptional one (short of the cost of college, which comes directly out of government funding which made the costs go way up).
Because you can pick your college, you can pick what you want/need/can afford.
Where exactly are you proving that public education comes out of capitalism? We have very few pure-capitalist markets in the U.S. because of cronyism and protectionism such as this subject. The ones we do (see: PCs, dial-up ISPs, ~cell phones, carpeting companies, clothes, etc, that go down in price over time even with inflation!) are extremely competitive and even the poor have access to all of what I listed.
Re:This is cronyism at its finest
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That's a pretty ridiculous concept, actually, considering that the free market of competition helps the poor more than it helps the rich.
For example, look at Jiffy Lube. Sure, everyone can probably change their oil themselves, but I get my oil changes for all my vehicles for $17.99 (with coupon) at Jiffy Lube. So do a lot of poor people. And what about Wal*Mart? They take back any returns without many questions, offer incredible price discounts, and pay their long-term employees well. What about the market for cheese? You can get exceptionally good and healthy cheese for a very low cost -- but there is expensive cheese for those who want it. Expensive cheese isn't limited to the wealthy, either.
If a school took advantage of the poor, another school who cares for the income would step up. With independent free market grading companies, you don't have to worry about your teachers -- as long as your student is passing independent testing, you know they're doing great. Also, it makes sense to have teachers who work without the huge bureaucracy of the public education system. Go to your township tomorrow, get a budget of the local education system, and divide it by teachers. Guess what? You'll probably come up with a 70% loss rate -- where'd the money go? To the bureaucrats! Free market education means that poor people might just want enough education to get their kids to a level where they can enter industry and hope to build a future for THEIR children -- they might also pick a school that sticks with the same basic education text books for a few years rather than replacing them every year with little-to-no difference.
You're losing more in your lifetime to public education (see property taxes) than you'd realize, and 70% of that money is going to bureaucrats to keep the system afloat.
Show me one truely competitive market that is bad to the poor -- I haven't found any in all my history of debating this debate.
Re:IMO, a step towards improving our education
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That's ridiculous. Do people in competitive jobs rate themselves and set their bonuses? No -- management does based on their additional value to the employer. You are only worth paying what you are worth earning -- including educators.
If you want to see teachers paid better, take a noose to publicly-funded education. In a competitive market, good teachers would get paid more for their value, bad teachers would get canned. In the public education system, all educators are basically treated equally and paid equally and are expected to do equally low tasks. It is yet another Statist program with almost no real oversight.
By the way, the teachers in my State (Illinois) are incredibly paid for the work they perform. They keep saying they're doing it for the children, but they're the first to picket when their pay doesn't meet what they expect.
This is cronyism at its finest
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This is unbelievable and one of the reasons I've always "lobbied" against public education where teachers are also graders. It is my firm belief that you don't grade your own work. If you're a programmer, do you get to grade your programming?
In any public job, allowing the employee to grade their output is going to end up with the grades falling into the average level as much as possible. If a public employee has too many failing students, they'll get fired. If they have too many students doing above average, they don't have a reason to ask for more money. With mostly average students (say, grade C or so), you can always say you can do better with more money. Since most teachers don't have a student for more than a few years, this can go on ad infinitum.
I'm against publicly funded education entirely, but I would be 100% satisfied with TRUE free market grading systems. The ACT and SAT are not realistic scoring systems -- even though the ACT says they are a private organization. We need REAL grading companies who settle the knowledge of students. Why should a 12 year old always be in the 6th grade? Shouldn't various students of various abilities be judged to their level by what the market needs? Shouldn't education be partially based on what will be required of the student if they were to enter the industry at a certain knowledge level?
To me, this feels like more teachers' union cronyism and preferential treatment to keep private industry out of the education system. What we need is more competition and less paternalism in this very-important market. Let us see what would happen when real competition creeps into the system -- not more regulation.
I am a voting anarcho-capitalist and I advocate voting for yourself as a way to vote none of the above. I do it, and I figure this is a great way to actually NOT waste you vote. If all the eligible non-voters voted for themselves, it would really show the State that there are a ton of people who don't like anyone -- neither evil.
If the 30-40% of eligible non-voters "won" over the winner of the candidate who got the majority of yes-voters, it would really turn things on its head. Imagine, a Republican getting 37% of the vote (winning), the Democrat getting 33% of the vote (loser) and the Unanimocracy voters getting 40% of "Other."
The Democrats pander to big business just as often (if not more often) than the Republicans do. They're just more able to offer it as some sort of "equality" of certain selected racial or income classes. Don't believe that we'll see anything better come from them that we did the Republicans -- remember, many Democrats voted for Republican pork so that the Republicans would vote for Democratic pork. Nothing will change.
The Internet is best left alone -- and deregulate communications as much as possible to allow for more competition. That will help everyone with lower prices, more competitive levels of service based on what the customer needs (rather than a one-size-fits-all solution), and better service levels due to the reduced cost of meeting regulations and restrictions.
We have just as much to be worried about with the Democrats in power as the Republicans. The Democrats are no friend to the free market, which means we'll see more restrictions on speech (ie, copyright and patent extensions), more restrictions on actions (ie, paying wages equal to the production of the worker) and more restrictions on competition with offshore companies (ie, forced benefits, federalizing of programs that should stay local, and probably higher barriers to entry against entrenched corporations).
The Democrats and the Republicans are two sides of the same face of the coin -- the left side and the right side of authoritarianism or Statism. The opposite side is freedom, something no political party (not even the Greens nor the Libertarians) are about.
Actually, slashdot accounts for around 15% of my income (no, not the ads on my blogs). Posting on slashdot gets me responses. These responses help me cater to my customers better. Basically, when you reply to me, if it is really informative (for me), I use that information to increase my value to my client base.
Slashdot posting also seems to have an odd side effect of increasing my recreation time by warning me about products that aren't worth my attention. I'd say I save 100 hours a year just from reading other people's experiences.
I browse slashdot in my incremental free time -- the time between the time I work, but not during my real free time. When I have 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there, I pop open my RSS feed reader and scan for articles I like across blogs, sites like slashdot, Google New's RSS feeds of keywords I'm interested in, etc. I'd say that of those 2400 posts I made, if I am "ahead" by 400 hours plus I was able to increase my income by that 15%, those posts are likely worth $25 a post -- a HUGE return on investment for 5 minutes each.
There's some side benefits, too. My name shows up in search engines pointing to some of the best slashdot discussions, so people who search for my name (a few a day, based on the referrals I get to my sites) know what I'm about, and also can read up on what I've said on a variety of topics. I also often link to my slashdot posts on various blogs I write as well as one tech e-mail newsletter for my clients, so they can also profit from the responses I get.
If anyone is here for pure pleasure, I'd be surprised. The folks here have a GREAT variety of opinions, and for me to go out and try to get those opinions any other way would be either impossible, or too costly. I can see why slashdot gets the PageRank and Alexa ranking it gets -- many people who visit without posting are gaining a profit just from reading the replies and conversations.
Maybe it is just my markets, but our consulting business has a huge variety of clients -- lawyers, contractors, fish distributors, accountants, graphics designers, etc. Our AVERAGE per-workstation cost including maintenance is well over US$1200 per month including all legal licenses for software. I'm not sure how any business doesn't account for all the costs, on average. I'm also including infrastructure (switches, routers, servers, printers, e-mail costs), and if I toss out smaller client bases (less than 40 users), that average cost jumps up significantly (around US$1700 per month).
That breaks down to around $40 a day -- which is a great return on investment considering most employees are costing the employer quite a bit more, but the overall profit is greater than employment overhead + IT infrastructure + support staff/phones. I'm thinking that my clients are happy with the costs since they're still competitive in price to THEIR clients, so the numbers are jiving somewhere.
I'm no fan of EULAs or any software licensing (not even the GPL) because I feel they don't really give you much room to negotiate a contract to your terms. But there comes a time in every transaction that you have to gauge your time versus what you get in return for your time. In this case, the US$100 this guy received was probably worth it for him to spend a few hours going through this process, but is it worth US$100 for most people? Laptops do seem to run better under *nix today than just a few years ago, so I will finally accept that a laptop can be a decent workstation for open source OSes. But I also see that for many people who use the PC, even if they eventually put another OS on it, Windows works fine, and even if they never run it, the path to try to return their copy is costlier than just eating it with the rare chance that you MIGHT need to run it.
Sure, there is a small percentage of "geeks" who will never run Windows, but for the great majority of *nix users, I'm not sure if this is the case -- even the average slashdot geek. Personally, my laptops that I use require Windows because they're production PCs -- AutoCAD, RIP print drivers (don't even try these under anything but Windows), scheduling/project management software, etc. For me, if I did run *nix, the 3-4 hours it would cost me to get a $100 refund would exceed the refund's return. What are most techs worth today?
I'm glad Dell did it, and I wish they did offer laptops free of operating systems. I'm not aware of the exact details of Microsoft's license agreement with Dell, but to me it seems as though they've both agree to a figure that makes a sense in a market perspective: the software is just expensive enough to make everyone money, and just cheap enough to make it useless to try to work around buying a copy. Also, Dell likely is able to produce less expensive hardware since they can now sell laptops that work out-of-the-box, rather than dealing with the support issues of helping users run their hardware on dozens of different operating systems. It is a double-win for both manufacturers, and not enough of a loss for the average user.
I'm never shocked when a geek complains about the Microsoft licensing scheme, even though I agree that more choice is better. When I break down the cost of a workstation for an average business client for a year, the US$210 or whatever Microsoft "tax" is barely 1% versus the costs of the applications and maintenance they need to run that workstation for a year. That's right, 1% -- many of my business clients spend upwards of US$10,000+ a year per user on software licenses, maintenance, and hardware. And they still need Windows for it, so if you price in Windows across the board (those who need it and those who don't want it). I'm sure that percentage of overall cost falls even lower -- making it seem to me that trying to get a refund doesn't show a big return on investment overall.
In this user's case, it may have been (I wouldn't have gone through the hoops, I'd buy an OEM laptop from another manufacturer such as Averatec), but I don't see that being true for most cases.
The fact is, you can't outrun supply and demand. Prices don't set S&D, S&D set prices. When the supply is near infinite, the price falls to zero, and there is nothing the State can do to control it. Imagine if they State charged for air.
This means that musicians and ALL artists will have to work just like everyone. They can create live (a show) for a fee. They can produce something unique (a jingle, or a painting) for a fee. They will have to do real jobs doing their thing if they want to make money.
This is a good thing. The free market is a great equalizer, giving power to those who want to continue creating rather than those who want to make-once-and-license. The free market makes sense: a plumber doesn't charge you per flush, he charges you to install the toilet, and then to fix it if it breaks. A musicians is like a plumber (I know, I produce a few of them); they should make their money touring and giving lessons and selling merchandise that is unique and not-easily duplicated (autographed copies makes sense).
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Thanks for calling me usually reasonable -- that's rare :) I even think I am unreasonable at times, ha.
In comment to your post, it looks like the market fixed what many people here think was broken. People realized that the original CDDB didn't really promise not to use the information and lock it down, so the market provided a second product that DOES promise not to lock it down.
To me, that's the free market at work. If I take all the slashdot posts (let's pretend that copyright doesn't exist) and "lock them down" by buying out slashdot, how fast do you think someone would put a new slashdot up, and promise not to resell the information or lock it down? I'd say nearly instantly. Yes, some past information, maybe a lot, might be locked down forever, but is there value in that old stuff? Was there value in what people gave to CDDB that couldn't be replaced in a new open system?
Problem solved, by the market, not by the law. Love it.
So, that's a yes then. And there's no such thing as anarcho-capitalism. That would properly be called libertarianism.
Libertarians are Statists who want smaller government or more local government. Anarcho-capitalists are either Voluntaryists who believe in a voluntary society or Unanimocrats who believe in unanimocracy -- they both believe in 100% voluntary affiliations. Both are anarcho-capitalists: they believe in no use of force (the State) and the ability to use your hands, mind and property to better yourself as long as you directly harm no one else's hands, mind or property.
I first went to a private clinic in Warsaw. The wait for free health care for my fever was about 3 weeks. The private clinic cost me about US$25, and the doctor said I should just stay in bed for a week and take some pills. I had a flight to India that was not cancelable, which I had to cancel (cost me about US$3000) but I traveled a few days later because I felt better. Then the REAL fever hit, heh.
Ugh. Japanese is annoying, hah.
November 11th, the Playstation 3 was released.
People are talking a lot about the quantity initially available, etc, but the product is also gaining attention because of positive features such as the Blue Ray drive and other hardware (CELL?).
The 60GB hard drive version can be purchased, so you'll see information on it right now.
First the site will discuss all the basic information of the product, and then go into detail on each section.
1. The package is heavy.
2. Here is the list of contents in the package.
3. Here's a picture of the box open
4. Here is a list of what comes with the package.
5. Here's a picture of the back.
6. Here's a picture of the left.
7. Here's a picture of the right.
8. Here's the memory card reader.
9. You can access the HDD slot.
10. Here's the 60GB Seagate hard drive.
Note
When dissassemblnig the product, you lose the manufacturer's warranty.
The PC Watch editorial staff is not responsible for any damage that my might occur if you take apart your model. It will damage the unit.
The editors of PC Watch will not answer any questions submitted about taking apart the product.
More photos:
1. The warning seal is similar to the PS2
2. When the seal is peeled off, "VOID" becomes visible.
3. Under the warning seal is a special screw which must be removed to get the cover off.
4. When you remove the large screw, the cover can be opened.
5. The cable which is connected to the cover goes to the memory card reader.
6. Removing the case shows you the BD drive and power supply.
7. Look at the power supply. It is a direct 100V power supply. The power supply is small.
8. The baseplate on the front side of the power supply is likely for separating the wireless networking from the power supply, along with the necessary cables.
9. When the BD drive, power supply and wireless networking system is removed, you can see the motherboard seal and the heatsink.
10. The the bottom of the case is removed, you can see the huge cooling fan who is not visible from outside the case.
11. Difference angle of the cooling fan. There is approximately 16cm of contact area for the fan.
12. You can see the fins for the heatsink and cooling system.
13. The cooling fan removed.
14. The heatsink removed, you can see the cooling piping.
15. Here's the motherboard top.
16. Here's the motherboard bottom.
17. Here are for big chips. The leftmost side is probably for the PS software emulation.
18. The next chip is the graphics chipset.
19. Under the seal of the graphics chipset, we see 4 chips.
20. The graphics memory is made by Samsung
21. The right most chip is a Sony CXD2973GB.
22. Not sure what this says, but it is connected with a lot of wires.
It is possible that I am a shill, but I have ALWAYS said why I come to slashdot: for personal gain in information and to promote the foundations of anarcho-capitalism to an audience that seems to be listening (looking at the growth of pro-free market techies here).
I'm NOT a millionaire -- I live in a mobile home, I drive a 96 Toyota Corolla, and I reinvest almost all my profits into new risky ventures or into ventures for others. But I may LIVE like a millionaire because my cost of living is about 80% lower than people who do the same work I do, so I am theoretically 400% richer in time value. If you and I make US$100,000 a year (let's just throw that number out) and it costs you $50,000 a year to live, plus US$40,000 in taxes at all levels, and it costs me US$10,000 a year to live plus $40,000 in taxes at all levels, you have US$10,000 a year to grow on, whereas I have US$50,000. That is an apples-to-apples comparison. If you all-of-a-sudden make US$1 million a year, after taxes and similar "now I'm wealthy I can buy more" costs, you probably won't have much more than I do making 10% of your new income. Thrift and time preference is key to being stable, not wealth. I still get that US$40,000 per year robbed from me in taxes, otherwise I could work less and do more.
Even if I am a shill, who cares? The ideas that we're all debating and discussing have value, so who cares if Microsoft or CmdrTaco give me early access than anyone else and pay me to promote my ideas? Some people here gain from the shared knowledge of the debates.
The black market is a great function for society in India versus society in the U.S. In India, the bureacracy is so corrupt already that people are rarely afraid of the law. If you pay a significant sum in black market dollars, you'll likely also pay some money to the law to keep them out of the process.
All forms of taxes come from a cost-benefit analysis, even if you don't realize you're doing it. In India, people KNOW their government is worthless, so they only give just enough in white market money to keep the law off their backs. It adds a stamp of State-officialness to pay SOME taxes, but the black market provides much more benefit for the costs involved. Is there risk? Sure. Is there corruption in the black market? Only because the law says it is corrupt -- most Indians gain much more out of the black market of competition than the white market of Statism and monopoly.
I'm going back to India in December (and then to Uganda and possibly Bulgaria) to see the changes made for a few businesses I invested in back in March. I gave a few poor entrepreneurs the equivalent of a few thousands US dollars total, and I already know they've grown way beyond what they'd do if they were in the States or in Western Europe. I didn't "invest" in them, I just gave them money to learn from where they'll go. Maybe some threw it away, maybe some invested it in their own businesses, maybe some gambled it on the lottery. As far as I know, though, all of them have turned it around into something remarkable.
My corporation has one of its locations in Mumbai, India (17 Napean Sea Road, in the Motilal Mansion, for those Indians who are reading this), where I stay when I am visiting. That area is amazing to me -- mansions, shacks, stores everywhere, new Mercedes riding alongside cattle in the roads. Anarchy, but no chaos. Amazing.
A. I type very, very fast (learned to type in 1978 at the age of 4) on a Commodore PET.
B. I write for a living -- thousands of words a day, generally.
C. I take notice of Slashdot articles that are pertinent to my future, such as this one.
D. I can write long-winded and fairly accurate articles in minutes, a little longer if I need to add sources.
Not so difficult, really. I have a long history of +5 first posts only because of how I browse slashdot (RSS link to my subscriber account). Love this site because of the interesting replies, so why not get in early to get the best replies, right? Karma means nothing -- I've honestly thought of just posting anonymously (which I have done often enough when I am accused of karma whoring).
Exactly. I "read" slashdot through my RSS newsreader, so I don't really pay attention to whether or not something is publicly visible or not. When I see something that is interesting, and if I have a few minutes to throw some notes up, I'll create my reply and send it -- usually by the time I finish my reply it is already live so it works well.
I'm sort of surprised how often I'll get a first post, though, even though I'm not looking for it. Where are the other subscribers? Maybe they don't read via RSS and get the article instantly when it is posted for subscribers to see.
I thought slashdot was letting non-subscribers see posts early if they looked at ads or something, did that remove that?
Social services in India are a joke -- the black market provides much more for the poor at a cheaper price. I got a terrible high fever in Europe (over 104) and was treated perfectly by an Indian doctor in a black market-type clinic. I paid cash (Rupees) and I couldn't believe how little they asked for the help. Would I get surgery in that clinic? I doubt it. But the fever was treated professionally, in a clean atmosphere, with no wait time. I saw enough poor people in that same clinic and in talking to them realized that there were numerous doctors who ran inexpensive clinics for everyone. The biggest dilemma was the social services officials who jailed (and possibly killed, alledgely) the black market clinics that competed with the terrible free ones.
As for extreme poverty, I saw a lot of poor people doing what they needed to do to get out of that situation -- caused by the high taxes and tyranny that existed within the socialist schemes. Some poor people recycled what they found in the trash (one lady we met with in a poor area actually bought her house by recycling water bottles over 10 years). Some poor people sold coconuts to tourists (very lucrative at 25 cents per coconut). Some poor people did horrific things -- but I've seen indebted Americans do horrific things, too. Overall, I saw people with their eyes glistening for opportunity rather than what I see in my own country -- poor people who submit to the State to take care of everything.
I was just in India this year (Spring 2006) for almost a month on a tour of Eastern Europe and Western India. The primary focus of the trip was to see how gold bullion affected areas with poverty and reduced labor. I was shocked at the competitive and relatively free market of India -- I also saw why so many people were gaining wealth and blowing open the tech community -- they were driven versus what I am familiar with in the States.
That being said, I don't think Ballmer was wrong to dance around the question. I think his answer hit the nail, head on!
Background on information and "free": When I ran my first multinode BBS starting in 1987, I saw that the future was something similar to client-server (the Internet never dawned on me at this point). My BBS was a pay-for-play gaming system, and people paid in order to connect and use the software that I 'rented' them via their ANSI terminal application. I saw how huge the future would be if the bandwidth could get beyond 2400 bps. I'm seeing that future today with things as simple as Wordpress and Google Spreadsheet. It blows my mind, and I do see how Microsoft wouldn't care about free software because it isn't on their radar screen. I don't know of much free software that is really competitive because truly free software doesn't have the support that it needs to compete with software that does have support. I'd rather see ad-bloated "free" software like Google Mail than bug-ridden memory-leaking software like Thunderbird. I use Firefox, but it is still a memory leaker that competes well with IE in terms of falling apart over a few hours of work.
The Indians will want nothing to do with it. India has a history of thousands of years of being capitalists -- only recently did we really see socialism take over, and it is starting to be pushed out by the millions who want to better their own lives and try to ignore what is best for "society" when they all know that the rest of society is made of individuals who also want to be better than them. The fact that India is growing in leaps and bounds comes because of the hard-driven individualistic atmosphere that exists in that country and seems to be in their blood (note: I have East Indian blood in me, but I am a mutt).
The Indians are already grasping the idea of advertising-funded online media, so maybe the next step is some sort of "use it for free" software -- but we all have to see that paid software seems to be better supported that truly free software. I love Google Mail, but it isn't free -- the ads displayed on the screen are paying for supporting the application developers. Americans tend to be anti-advertising, but the West Asian part of the world is definitely not -- when I was in India, I saw entire houses painted by a corporation to be their logo and color (the owner of the home was paid nicely for allowing it). I saw taxis driving around with vinyl-cut ads from every sort of retailer, small and large. I saw how heavily the "Bollywood-style" advertisements cluttered the mainstream media there. The Indians aren't afraid of finding a way to make money on everything they can -- in order to better their own lives without a big expense to anyone else.
The entire Indian economy is run in a balanced Statist-Anarchist way. If you buy anything large (car, house, land, business) you pay a small portion of "white" money (that is heavily taxed) and a big portion of "black" money (that is under the table, and often comes in the form of bullion). That's awesome -- people realize what a burden the State is, and they work around it. The same will be true of the "free" software drive there -- people will realize that they can gain without causing other people to lose -- by finding a way to subsidize whatever the future is of the software market.
Some Americans care about Open Source because they're anti-corporation, but that isn't the reason for Open Source, not really. Open Source and free software both come out of supply and demand: there is always a demand for som
Are you being funny or serious?
There's a lesson to be learned -- when you share your information, expect others to take advantage of it if they can find a way to make a gain that doesn't hurt you. You admit you spent a whopping 5 minutes submitting something for others to use. Someone decided to use it. The information that you submitted is probably still there in FreeDB, or was perfected by someone else. It doesn't go away.
Gracenote decided they had to move CDDB from a public resource to a private one because the demand dictated it. If they left it up to the public, it would wither away from a competitor -- and then all your "hard work" would be gone. Your information is still helping the public (how many of us pay directly to use Gracenote), but now someone is charging in order to keep that information there for as long as there is demand for it.
If you wrote free e-books that anyone else could write in 5 minutes, and someone hosted them and then said "we have so much demand that we have to charge for downloads" would you rather have your e-book deleted forever, or have it still exist and have someone charge for the services they provide -- the ongoing labors that are worth money, not the one-time-gimme-money mentality of the pro-copyright crowd. (Note, the e-book isn't a just comparison, but I'm simplifying it)
I've never really understood why people are angry at GraceNote. If you put information out into the world, expect others to copy it. Expect some to take it and make it profitable. Expect someone to get some gain out of it that you might not be able to or even want.
Yes, there are various State-run ways to try to protect content or ideas (copyright, trademarks, patent, etc). These are useless for everyone but the ultra-powerful who can afford to litigate copyright infringement. Don't believe me? Try to battle someone copying your music, art or words.
My own sites ALL repudiate copyright -- I release it into the public domain, and even tell people to stick their own name on it. I make my profit two ways: I gain incredible information from the replies on slashdot or on my blogs or forums (that's free information from you to me), and I leverage that information into my "real life" of consulting and speaking engagements.
If you reply on slashdot, theoretically you own the content of your post. But how many people take your post and use it to form their own opinion? Who owns the newly formed opinions? In my mind, no one, ever. Sure, you may have submitted some CD information to CDDB, but who is to say that the information is unique to you -- and even if it was, who cares what CDDB did with it if you gave it away freely. Even if you put a restriction on it, how are you going to stop CDDB from changing its business model? If Linux all-of-a-sudden was ripped off completely by a big company and sold commercially, how would you fight it? With what funds?
What Grace Note did might seem mean or wrong, but I don't see a problem with it. People volunteer information for free all the time (see slashdot or any blog's comments). Other people use this and work hard to find value out of that information for others. It is the continued labor of working that is valuable to the market, not the one-time work that someone hopes to make repeated profits on.
I wouldn't want you to do MY taxes since you didn't seem to read my post. The Income Tax itself is not a significant tax base -- the poor actually do pay less/get money back. I'm talking about FICA (try getting a deducation for that), property tax, sales tax, Medicare, unemployment, FICA employer shared, unemployment employer share, Medicare employer share, gas tax, communications taxes, energy taxes and surcharges, tariffs, etc, etc, etc.
If you don't believe me, start writing things down in your own life. You'll throw your hands up in disbelief after only 2 pay periods, when the percentages of your gross income are cut in half by gross incompetence of the taxing bodies. Oh, and don't forget to include the ~8% employer share on your FICA that you'd get in a free market.
I'm not sure that removing publicly funded schools is the answer either. Who would pay for the kids in poor areas where most parents can barely pay for rent and food, let alone education? Removing the public funds would take us back to an era where poor children had little or no education, couldn't read or write, and were destined for back breaking manual labor which they didn't even have the education/smarts to object to. The opportunities afforded these children by publicly funded schools are phenomenal when compared to having no education at all.
I've been through this debate before, too many times.
The average household in the U.S. pays over 50% of its gross income to taxes at every level -- and rarely getting any equivalent return. The poor are especially affected by tax rate since they have few to no write-offs. We're not talking income taxes, here, which few of us actually pay in significant amount. We're talking about all the other taxes (including the portion of their rent which goes to the landlord's property taxes). If you earn only US$15,000 per year, you're likely paying over US$9,000 in all the various taxes (including your employer's ~8% FICA matches).
When the poor are so heavily taxes, the poor have fewer choices. We all could do more for ourselves if we were not taxed so heavily. Go back 30 years and the household tax rate was under 15%, and I believe under 8% a decade or two before that. Any wonder that both parents have to work today?
Give everyone back their hard-earned money, don't steal the additional 8% FICA and you'll see the poor in a competitive advantage to make better decisions. On top of that, the poor also pay their property tax portion for life just like we all do, which could total tens of thousands or more over their lifetimes -- enough to let them invest in their children's children.
Really? The U.S. has one of the worst public education systems in the world, but the college system is a competitive one in terms of choice, and we have a fairly exceptional one (short of the cost of college, which comes directly out of government funding which made the costs go way up).
Because you can pick your college, you can pick what you want/need/can afford.
Where exactly are you proving that public education comes out of capitalism? We have very few pure-capitalist markets in the U.S. because of cronyism and protectionism such as this subject. The ones we do (see: PCs, dial-up ISPs, ~cell phones, carpeting companies, clothes, etc, that go down in price over time even with inflation!) are extremely competitive and even the poor have access to all of what I listed.
That's a pretty ridiculous concept, actually, considering that the free market of competition helps the poor more than it helps the rich.
For example, look at Jiffy Lube. Sure, everyone can probably change their oil themselves, but I get my oil changes for all my vehicles for $17.99 (with coupon) at Jiffy Lube. So do a lot of poor people. And what about Wal*Mart? They take back any returns without many questions, offer incredible price discounts, and pay their long-term employees well. What about the market for cheese? You can get exceptionally good and healthy cheese for a very low cost -- but there is expensive cheese for those who want it. Expensive cheese isn't limited to the wealthy, either.
If a school took advantage of the poor, another school who cares for the income would step up. With independent free market grading companies, you don't have to worry about your teachers -- as long as your student is passing independent testing, you know they're doing great. Also, it makes sense to have teachers who work without the huge bureaucracy of the public education system. Go to your township tomorrow, get a budget of the local education system, and divide it by teachers. Guess what? You'll probably come up with a 70% loss rate -- where'd the money go? To the bureaucrats! Free market education means that poor people might just want enough education to get their kids to a level where they can enter industry and hope to build a future for THEIR children -- they might also pick a school that sticks with the same basic education text books for a few years rather than replacing them every year with little-to-no difference.
You're losing more in your lifetime to public education (see property taxes) than you'd realize, and 70% of that money is going to bureaucrats to keep the system afloat.
Show me one truely competitive market that is bad to the poor -- I haven't found any in all my history of debating this debate.
That's ridiculous. Do people in competitive jobs rate themselves and set their bonuses? No -- management does based on their additional value to the employer. You are only worth paying what you are worth earning -- including educators.
If you want to see teachers paid better, take a noose to publicly-funded education. In a competitive market, good teachers would get paid more for their value, bad teachers would get canned. In the public education system, all educators are basically treated equally and paid equally and are expected to do equally low tasks. It is yet another Statist program with almost no real oversight.
By the way, the teachers in my State (Illinois) are incredibly paid for the work they perform. They keep saying they're doing it for the children, but they're the first to picket when their pay doesn't meet what they expect.
This is unbelievable and one of the reasons I've always "lobbied" against public education where teachers are also graders. It is my firm belief that you don't grade your own work. If you're a programmer, do you get to grade your programming?
In any public job, allowing the employee to grade their output is going to end up with the grades falling into the average level as much as possible. If a public employee has too many failing students, they'll get fired. If they have too many students doing above average, they don't have a reason to ask for more money. With mostly average students (say, grade C or so), you can always say you can do better with more money. Since most teachers don't have a student for more than a few years, this can go on ad infinitum.
I'm against publicly funded education entirely, but I would be 100% satisfied with TRUE free market grading systems. The ACT and SAT are not realistic scoring systems -- even though the ACT says they are a private organization. We need REAL grading companies who settle the knowledge of students. Why should a 12 year old always be in the 6th grade? Shouldn't various students of various abilities be judged to their level by what the market needs? Shouldn't education be partially based on what will be required of the student if they were to enter the industry at a certain knowledge level?
To me, this feels like more teachers' union cronyism and preferential treatment to keep private industry out of the education system. What we need is more competition and less paternalism in this very-important market. Let us see what would happen when real competition creeps into the system -- not more regulation.
I am a voting anarcho-capitalist and I advocate voting for yourself as a way to vote none of the above. I do it, and I figure this is a great way to actually NOT waste you vote. If all the eligible non-voters voted for themselves, it would really show the State that there are a ton of people who don't like anyone -- neither evil.
If the 30-40% of eligible non-voters "won" over the winner of the candidate who got the majority of yes-voters, it would really turn things on its head. Imagine, a Republican getting 37% of the vote (winning), the Democrat getting 33% of the vote (loser) and the Unanimocracy voters getting 40% of "Other."
I'm a fan of that decision.
The Democrats pander to big business just as often (if not more often) than the Republicans do. They're just more able to offer it as some sort of "equality" of certain selected racial or income classes. Don't believe that we'll see anything better come from them that we did the Republicans -- remember, many Democrats voted for Republican pork so that the Republicans would vote for Democratic pork. Nothing will change.
The Internet is best left alone -- and deregulate communications as much as possible to allow for more competition. That will help everyone with lower prices, more competitive levels of service based on what the customer needs (rather than a one-size-fits-all solution), and better service levels due to the reduced cost of meeting regulations and restrictions.
We have just as much to be worried about with the Democrats in power as the Republicans. The Democrats are no friend to the free market, which means we'll see more restrictions on speech (ie, copyright and patent extensions), more restrictions on actions (ie, paying wages equal to the production of the worker) and more restrictions on competition with offshore companies (ie, forced benefits, federalizing of programs that should stay local, and probably higher barriers to entry against entrenched corporations).
The Democrats and the Republicans are two sides of the same face of the coin -- the left side and the right side of authoritarianism or Statism. The opposite side is freedom, something no political party (not even the Greens nor the Libertarians) are about.
If you want freedom, start voting for none of the above like I do.
Actually, slashdot accounts for around 15% of my income (no, not the ads on my blogs). Posting on slashdot gets me responses. These responses help me cater to my customers better. Basically, when you reply to me, if it is really informative (for me), I use that information to increase my value to my client base.
Slashdot posting also seems to have an odd side effect of increasing my recreation time by warning me about products that aren't worth my attention. I'd say I save 100 hours a year just from reading other people's experiences.
I browse slashdot in my incremental free time -- the time between the time I work, but not during my real free time. When I have 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there, I pop open my RSS feed reader and scan for articles I like across blogs, sites like slashdot, Google New's RSS feeds of keywords I'm interested in, etc. I'd say that of those 2400 posts I made, if I am "ahead" by 400 hours plus I was able to increase my income by that 15%, those posts are likely worth $25 a post -- a HUGE return on investment for 5 minutes each.
There's some side benefits, too. My name shows up in search engines pointing to some of the best slashdot discussions, so people who search for my name (a few a day, based on the referrals I get to my sites) know what I'm about, and also can read up on what I've said on a variety of topics. I also often link to my slashdot posts on various blogs I write as well as one tech e-mail newsletter for my clients, so they can also profit from the responses I get.
If anyone is here for pure pleasure, I'd be surprised. The folks here have a GREAT variety of opinions, and for me to go out and try to get those opinions any other way would be either impossible, or too costly. I can see why slashdot gets the PageRank and Alexa ranking it gets -- many people who visit without posting are gaining a profit just from reading the replies and conversations.
Maybe it is just my markets, but our consulting business has a huge variety of clients -- lawyers, contractors, fish distributors, accountants, graphics designers, etc. Our AVERAGE per-workstation cost including maintenance is well over US$1200 per month including all legal licenses for software. I'm not sure how any business doesn't account for all the costs, on average. I'm also including infrastructure (switches, routers, servers, printers, e-mail costs), and if I toss out smaller client bases (less than 40 users), that average cost jumps up significantly (around US$1700 per month).
That breaks down to around $40 a day -- which is a great return on investment considering most employees are costing the employer quite a bit more, but the overall profit is greater than employment overhead + IT infrastructure + support staff/phones. I'm thinking that my clients are happy with the costs since they're still competitive in price to THEIR clients, so the numbers are jiving somewhere.
I'm no fan of EULAs or any software licensing (not even the GPL) because I feel they don't really give you much room to negotiate a contract to your terms. But there comes a time in every transaction that you have to gauge your time versus what you get in return for your time. In this case, the US$100 this guy received was probably worth it for him to spend a few hours going through this process, but is it worth US$100 for most people? Laptops do seem to run better under *nix today than just a few years ago, so I will finally accept that a laptop can be a decent workstation for open source OSes. But I also see that for many people who use the PC, even if they eventually put another OS on it, Windows works fine, and even if they never run it, the path to try to return their copy is costlier than just eating it with the rare chance that you MIGHT need to run it.
Sure, there is a small percentage of "geeks" who will never run Windows, but for the great majority of *nix users, I'm not sure if this is the case -- even the average slashdot geek. Personally, my laptops that I use require Windows because they're production PCs -- AutoCAD, RIP print drivers (don't even try these under anything but Windows), scheduling/project management software, etc. For me, if I did run *nix, the 3-4 hours it would cost me to get a $100 refund would exceed the refund's return. What are most techs worth today?
I'm glad Dell did it, and I wish they did offer laptops free of operating systems. I'm not aware of the exact details of Microsoft's license agreement with Dell, but to me it seems as though they've both agree to a figure that makes a sense in a market perspective: the software is just expensive enough to make everyone money, and just cheap enough to make it useless to try to work around buying a copy. Also, Dell likely is able to produce less expensive hardware since they can now sell laptops that work out-of-the-box, rather than dealing with the support issues of helping users run their hardware on dozens of different operating systems. It is a double-win for both manufacturers, and not enough of a loss for the average user.
I'm never shocked when a geek complains about the Microsoft licensing scheme, even though I agree that more choice is better. When I break down the cost of a workstation for an average business client for a year, the US$210 or whatever Microsoft "tax" is barely 1% versus the costs of the applications and maintenance they need to run that workstation for a year. That's right, 1% -- many of my business clients spend upwards of US$10,000+ a year per user on software licenses, maintenance, and hardware. And they still need Windows for it, so if you price in Windows across the board (those who need it and those who don't want it). I'm sure that percentage of overall cost falls even lower -- making it seem to me that trying to get a refund doesn't show a big return on investment overall.
In this user's case, it may have been (I wouldn't have gone through the hoops, I'd buy an OEM laptop from another manufacturer such as Averatec), but I don't see that being true for most cases.
The fact is, you can't outrun supply and demand. Prices don't set S&D, S&D set prices. When the supply is near infinite, the price falls to zero, and there is nothing the State can do to control it. Imagine if they State charged for air.
This means that musicians and ALL artists will have to work just like everyone. They can create live (a show) for a fee. They can produce something unique (a jingle, or a painting) for a fee. They will have to do real jobs doing their thing if they want to make money.
This is a good thing. The free market is a great equalizer, giving power to those who want to continue creating rather than those who want to make-once-and-license. The free market makes sense: a plumber doesn't charge you per flush, he charges you to install the toilet, and then to fix it if it breaks. A musicians is like a plumber (I know, I produce a few of them); they should make their money touring and giving lessons and selling merchandise that is unique and not-easily duplicated (autographed copies makes sense).
1. Incorporate
2. ??? = Work as a subcontracing corporation
3. Profit!!!
(4. -- Don't release ANY legal information to your general contractor)
I've done this for 18 years, and the tax breaks and freedoms are incredible.