Good idea. Let google be given a mandated monopoly in exchange for 'ignoring' certain books published by companies in bed with the Congress.
I'd rather see Google fight a terrible set of laws violating our Constitutional rights, or work to repeal the horrific copyright laws which are antiquated anyway.
We are mere months (maybe a year) away from the ability to completely scan any book and convert it accurately to text based PDF in under an hour. It will likely be F/OSS software that does it, released ostensibly to save old books in the public domain.
When this happens, books will end up on P2P just like movies, music, porn, and images. Just as P2P helps people find interesting musicians and performers, it will help people find interesting writers and authors.
No one can stop it. The big delay was caused by lack of available hardware to handle the intensive scanning and converting. We've seen software that can use a webcam or cellcam to scan documents quickly. This is processor performance driven. PCs aren't getting slower.
5 huge libraries and a multibillion dollar corporation can not compete with hundreds of millions of end users volunteering a few hours a year to copy their favorite books. The entire published collection of books for the last hundred years could be online by 2007.
Google should be embraced by publishers, not sued. Google could track interest, topically sort similar novel(list)s, and provide a great research tool and froogle-to-buy source.
If the RIAA had iTunes before Napster, who knows where we'd be. If the MPAA embraced e-distribution at a reasonable price and quality, the same is true.
People don't become pirates for financial reasons of theft, but of supply and demand. Hundreds of millions of BT users would rather pay $1 than waste hundreds of hours on low quality, low speed, high risk piracy.
You're right, but I love to say free market democracy as all free markets are the perfect form of democracy. Voting with every choice, every dollar.
In your example, nothing will prevent others from constantly competing. If the huge large banana corporation doesn't have competition it means the customers are happy! If not, someone will always make medium and small bananas. Heck, local farmer markets might have F/OSS bananas in order to entice you to browse their other fruit:)
Here's my #1 problem with governments: the committee. These mini-groups tend to debate over what is best for them, not their constituents.
Example of typical bad true Democracy: 51 out of 100 people love large bananas. They vote to regulate bananas, and now only large bananas are available.
Example of typical bad representative democracy: 5 representatives of 100 people form a banana size committee. 2 of them have friends or family who grow medium sized bananas. 51 of 100 citizens prefer large bananas. The 2 reps convince the other 3 to set the definition of 'large' as equal to the medium sized bananas, in exchange for adding pork to the law that helps the other 3 reps.
Example of free market democracy: 51 out of 100 people like large bananas. 30 like medium, and 19 like tiny. Banana growers grow all 3 sizes, selling them at a price set by the supply of certain sizes and the demand for those sizes.
The first two forms of democracy are, well, bananas. Nuts! This is how we live today in the US. The UN is even worse,with almost zero input by the constituents.
Internet governance is best delegated to corporations and individuals. Profit is merely a reflection of a company's ability to meet the demands (price, quality, performance) of their customers. Profit can not be demanded. Profit can not be stolen. Profit can not be fraudulent for long. Except when a company is given monopoly power by government mandate (schools, roads, etc).
The Internet is a group of individuals who pick an ISP. The groups of ISPs choose a backbone provider. The backbones choose to interconnect.
Why is governance needed? If a backbone decides to break away, customers and ISPs will choose another backbone. If an ISP decides to censor or charge too much, users can select another ISP (except when government forces zero choice).
There is zero need for government involvement, except to tax, regulate, censor and control.
You're mostly correct. Today, right now, DNS is needed. So are fax machines and Liquid Paper.
Yet the future of the Internet will only seek out more competition, fewer regulations and restrictions, and less dependence on older standards. I do believe the Internet could operate just fine without a central DNS authority. Yes, it would be an enormous problem if DNS broke today or even attempted separation, but it won't happen. Those who depend on the voluntary choice of their customers would immediately find a fix in the event of an outage or separation.
The US is wrong in wants to continue to control DNS root services. The UN is even more wrong in thinking taking control would make things better.
In the long run, newer protocols and information sharing services will give people the information they want without the need for DNS. Most people communicating over IM don't even see domain names. Most people communicating over BT don't either. As bandwidth goes up and newer forms of hive-communications are created, we'll see less and less central control.
I remember running my first BBS. 1 node. Local users only. No sharing of data with other BBSes and only 1 user at a time. Then multinode, then FidoNet, then UseNet, then Gopher, then E-mail, then WWW, then ICQ, then Napster, then BT, then ???
Information is getting less centralized or tied to a location in ever faste steps. DNS is ready for replacement.
I'm pretty open about my "Drop the Vote" anti-voting stance, but I do openly support the RLC for their voice. If you like Coleman, consider voicing to his office what you don't like. He's noteably affiliated with the neoconservative war-welfare machine, but I think his support there is wavering. Hes a surprising good listen on CSPAN, but talk is just talk.
The DMCRA is interesting but will end up as a pork conveyor belt. The best way to protect consumers' rights is to destroy laws curtailing them.
Rights can never be provided by law, they can only be destroyed by law.
Norm Coleman ranked very pro-freedom by the RLC. While he's still a Statist, he seems to have a lightly more freedom oriented strategy for the Senate.
The provisions for the Internet being taken over by the UN or any political body will likely bifurcate the Net into multiple separate networks still interconnected but ready to dissolve from those that censor or regulate the information more than the billions of users want.
Seriously, is DNS control even necessary? My 'utopian' internet future doesn't see much need for DNS. Bit-torrent doesn't need it, Google lets me find information anywhere without needing to remember domain names, and portable bookmarks make my life simple.
My Internet doesn't need DNS as it is set up today. E-mail is dependent on DNS for now, but a combination of BitTorrent and LDAP will shut that need off if DNS gets ripped apart.
There are three reasons for government control of DNS: 1. Censorship 2. Regulation/licensing of certain speech (campaign, medical, educational?) 3. Profit!!! (for the cronies who sell domain names)
There is zero need for any regulation. The Internet could be usurped by any big business but isn't. The ultimate proof of anarchy in action. Companies that try to control the users are beaten by those that provide open access. Companies that want to break free from the global structure will anger their users who want access to anyone else. Verizon could separate their phone network completely but its in their best interest to communicate with their competition.
The UN just wants monopoly power through force and coercion. The private corporations want to be #1 but have to constantly compete with others.
This release seems dumb for Intel. No optimized motherboards, outrageous power requirements and a really inefficient core? It isn't even alpha-release worthy. Why would Intel release a product that is just waiting for a poor review? Is the high end market that hungry?
The article didn't need 15 pages to explain Intel's mistakes. Intel will lose more customers to AMD than if they had waited until they had a viable and competitive product.
400W while idling? For sub-standard performance? Yay.
1. The casual home counterfeiter. A guy with an inkjet who is 'having fun.' These guys get caught quickly by the secret service.
2. The black market Wal*Mart, a.k.a. the Mob. They reconstitute $1 bills into pulp, reform the cotton into large sheets, and silkscreen new 'old style' $100 bills. By using the real paper and near-perfect ink in the old style bills, they get past the verification pens and bank scanners. Funny thing is, this style of counterfeit is almost dead as credit card fraud is much more lucrative and far safer. Bank draft fraud and money order fraud is easier, too.
3. The Federal Reserve. Yes, Alan Greenspan and friends is actually the #1 counterfeit organization in the world. Because our currency is no longer backed by hard metal, the FRB is allowed to counterfeit billions of new dollars annually. The is legal by acts of Congress, and is not only the biggest reason for inflation, it is also the cause of the stock market bubble and the housing bubble. It also allows the government to finance off budget programs by introducing new currency into circulation.
Incorporating these security dots only helps catch common criminals, not large scale organizations. And the worst violator, the FRB, counterfeits legally.
Early TV standards halted the initial growth of Cable and Satellite. Waiting for a standard for HDTV almost killed it, too.
Early telephone standards made cell phone research take decades. It slowed DSL rollouts and kept features like CID out for a decade, too.
The industries saw the need for new features and the market decided which "standards" were the most desirable.
IM is doing just fine for hundreds of millions of users. If they decide (through millions of individual choices) that they want interoperability, it will happen.
Yay for F/OSS bloatware! (No offense to the poster)
Now if only they could have a floating thumb tack that gives you help whenever you don't need it.
Do people honestly use grammar check? Hasn't it been proven that no grammar checker works well enough to provide a wide cover of the English language?
Personally, when I write an article or something for wide dissemination, I'll send it to a group of writers I know and trust. Peer editing. They do the same when they need a human review. I'm sure there are websites to help others do similar swaps.
The MS Word g/c pisses me off bigtime. I have to disable it or go crazy.
For me, a grammar check is a bloat feature that doesn't add worth to a word processor. This is especially true for technical documents.
Is this a feature needed solely to promote the package (like the "often used" cruise control on every car) to the masses?
I'd rather have a thin distribution that works quickly without consuming massive amounts of RAM and processing power.
I'm confused. Even if SCO acquires a component, isn't the final F/OSS release of that component still F/OSS per the GPL or whatever license it was released with?
Take said component and keep refining it.
If this is a future worry, adapt the license so that other OSS components remain OSS if future versions are commercialized.
Its a big business conspiracy to become an uncompetitive monopoly. Just like GM, Ford and Dodge have a monopoly on U.S. Produced cars, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL have a complete monopoly on IM services. Just look at how much they charge for their monopoly service!
This guy is totally right. Instead of these 3 expensive monopoly services, we should instead switch to one single service that we know is far more competitive than three monopolies. It is wonderful that he's so unselfish, I'm sure the time he spends working on his company's (check the link on that tirade) software is donated.
While we're breaking down the IM monopoly, we should also tear drop the fruit monopoly that all those grocery stores have, and just grow and share fruit amongst each other in a free and open way. Come by the farm I work for, get a free orange while you peruse our other items for sale. Screw big bad grocery stores! My company gives away oranges!
There's no problem here. This guy is posing his rant in order to generate interest in his company to better secure his job. We should make every car part interoperable between manufacturers, and make every TV the same size so that everyone sees the same picture. I'm sure it won't stifle development.
Thank you for cutting the budget of [department]. It is obvious that you understand our Federast Republic as well as the limits the Constitution sets over your powers.
I am glad that you also understand that the [number] jobs eliminated will reappear in greater numbers in private businesses that will grow stronger from the money taxpayers won't have to spend supporting unconstitutional programs.
I appreciate your ability to restrain your powers and offer your constituents the chance to spend their hard earned money as their households and families need.
Hence why I'd rather see it as a private e-bond rather than a public stock.
My big problem with public stocks is that they seem only valuable if they increase in price. I own zero public stocks. I do own a ton of private shares and bonds in projects so I get not only a nice dividend, but also a real controlled stake in direction.
As an e-bond, WhedonCo owns 100% of the company, but must pay back the bond plus interest at a given time. The bond is just a loan to get things going. I shouldn't have said "share" or "profit" but "coupon" and "interest" is more correct.
If enough interest was shown (money where your mouth is), the project wouldn't need $5M per episode, I think. First, the old budget includes marketing. Bond holders would incur that personally, a la viral marketing. Second, the old budget reflects a portion of risk distributed among many shows, that too can be removed. Lastly, advertising can still be a minor income if its a provision like "Firefly 2.0 brought to you by Linksys Cisco" at the beginning of the program. A more directed ad showed us geeks who helped bring the program back wouldn't be shunned as much as 5 ad segments.
Every product we buy needs long and short term maintenance. Cars need oil, tires, waxing and tinkering under the hood. Software, especially complex operating systems with a ton of third party programs, are no different. As Linux gains features and popularity, it also gains incompatibilities.
Most end users seem to understand and accept some expense that decreases future downtime. Not a single customer of mine refused Microsoft's yearly subscription. Not one refuses to pay my employees' $95/hour invoices for applying all the various first and third party patches.
Back to cars... Does GM repair recalls for free? Sure. But if your new radio doesn't interface with hour Vette, you buy the harness. When Windows is defeated by a new loophole that only occurs from connecting to the web, who's fault is it?
You can always remove your 3rd party radio in your car. Go back to the OEM one. You can stop browsing through AOL using your Intel NIC, get MSN service and only browse MS websites, too.
I've always felt F/OSS users ignore their time value. My personal time is worth $60/hour to me, including rest/sleep. My customers see a return of more valuable time when they pay for maintenance. F/OSS hasn't paid enough of a ROI for me to promote it.
What a ridiculous article. Retail sales are meaningless without integrating direct sales (Dell, etc). I run two retail stores (not in IT) and if you based anything on my sales and ignored our e-commerce competition, you'd be predictably wrong.
First, retailers will generally maximize margins buy promoting less expensive costing products. E-commerce generally runs tight margins on everything.
Example: Intel Retail PC retails for $799, cost is $619. AMD Retail PC retails for $749, cost is $549. The retailer sees a $10 better margin on the AMD but reduces gross sales. Which one will the consumer pick, generally? Whatever is cheap.
Don't believe any sales figures any more. They're ignorant of the true market, which is retail, e-commerce, eBay, and buying in pieces from your local OEM "wholesaler."
Just basing figures like these on whatever market gives you the best results is more to keep shareholders happy.
I have an interesting idea, maybe I'll get some feedback here.
How about a functional investment ("bond") distribution model for a show like Firefly?
Let's say Whedon needs to see $5M before he attempts online distribution. Instead of trying to merely pre-sell 200,000 $25 yearly subscriptions, maybe offer $25 subscriptions and $100 investment bonds. $100 gets you 1 share (out of 100,000). Assume WhedonCo buys 51,000 at $5.1M for 51% ownership. I'd gladly invest $10,000 for a 0.1% share.
Once production begins, others will likely pay $4/episode or $30/season. I'll make my percentage after overhead, and have a major reason to promote the show to friends and family.
Heck, if I can make $0.01 per subscription and 2M people end up subscribing, that's $20K for me. I'd be happy with that.
Advertisements in their current form are different than they were 10 years ago. They're tested at regular speed and fast speed. Thought is given to logo placement early before one can click skip.
Yet the distributor doesn't care who pays, as long as someone does. iTunes should consider a survey ad system for buying points. Watch a 60 second ad, answer 5 questions, earn 50 points to use for purchase.
Also, piracy is counterproductive for true fans. If Firefly 2.0 gets on SciFi and 80% of you bootleg it, don't expect a third season. I'll never understand the people here who complain about lack of good content yet have 3000 songs from Limewire.
In the long run, offering multiple acquisition options makes sense. I'll pay a subscription for content I like. I'll pay extra for HD and DD. I'll pay extra for bloopers and outtakes, and maybe for getting it a few days earlier.
Content control doesn't bother me. As long as I can watch it on my TVs at home and on my PDA unlimited times, I'm fine with DRM. Shows requiring deletion after a week I just won't watch.
iTunes won't kill the networks. Freedom of choice will kill those unavoidable to provide what the market wants.
Until government regulates iTunes to protect the networks.
Slashdot Mirror
Good idea. Let google be given a mandated monopoly in exchange for 'ignoring' certain books published by companies in bed with the Congress.
I'd rather see Google fight a terrible set of laws violating our Constitutional rights, or work to repeal the horrific copyright laws which are antiquated anyway.
Until Disney buys Google.
We are mere months (maybe a year) away from the ability to completely scan any book and convert it accurately to text based PDF in under an hour. It will likely be F/OSS software that does it, released ostensibly to save old books in the public domain.
When this happens, books will end up on P2P just like movies, music, porn, and images. Just as P2P helps people find interesting musicians and performers, it will help people find interesting writers and authors.
No one can stop it. The big delay was caused by lack of available hardware to handle the intensive scanning and converting. We've seen software that can use a webcam or cellcam to scan documents quickly. This is processor performance driven. PCs aren't getting slower.
5 huge libraries and a multibillion dollar corporation can not compete with hundreds of millions of end users volunteering a few hours a year to copy their favorite books. The entire published collection of books for the last hundred years could be online by 2007.
Google should be embraced by publishers, not sued. Google could track interest, topically sort similar novel(list)s, and provide a great research tool and froogle-to-buy source.
If the RIAA had iTunes before Napster, who knows where we'd be. If the MPAA embraced e-distribution at a reasonable price and quality, the same is true.
People don't become pirates for financial reasons of theft, but of supply and demand. Hundreds of millions of BT users would rather pay $1 than waste hundreds of hours on low quality, low speed, high risk piracy.
You're right, but I love to say free market democracy as all free markets are the perfect form of democracy. Voting with every choice, every dollar.
:)
In your example, nothing will prevent others from constantly competing. If the huge large banana corporation doesn't have competition it means the customers are happy! If not, someone will always make medium and small bananas. Heck, local farmer markets might have F/OSS bananas in order to entice you to browse their other fruit
Here's my #1 problem with governments: the committee. These mini-groups tend to debate over what is best for them, not their constituents.
Example of typical bad true Democracy: 51 out of 100 people love large bananas. They vote to regulate bananas, and now only large bananas are available.
Example of typical bad representative democracy: 5 representatives of 100 people form a banana size committee. 2 of them have friends or family who grow medium sized bananas. 51 of 100 citizens prefer large bananas. The 2 reps convince the other 3 to set the definition of 'large' as equal to the medium sized bananas, in exchange for adding pork to the law that helps the other 3 reps.
Example of free market democracy: 51 out of 100 people like large bananas. 30 like medium, and 19 like tiny. Banana growers grow all 3 sizes, selling them at a price set by the supply of certain sizes and the demand for those sizes.
The first two forms of democracy are, well, bananas. Nuts! This is how we live today in the US. The UN is even worse,with almost zero input by the constituents.
Internet governance is best delegated to corporations and individuals. Profit is merely a reflection of a company's ability to meet the demands (price, quality, performance) of their customers. Profit can not be demanded. Profit can not be stolen. Profit can not be fraudulent for long. Except when a company is given monopoly power by government mandate (schools, roads, etc).
The Internet is a group of individuals who pick an ISP. The groups of ISPs choose a backbone provider. The backbones choose to interconnect.
Why is governance needed? If a backbone decides to break away, customers and ISPs will choose another backbone. If an ISP decides to censor or charge too much, users can select another ISP (except when government forces zero choice).
There is zero need for government involvement, except to tax, regulate, censor and control.
You're mostly correct. Today, right now, DNS is needed. So are fax machines and Liquid Paper.
Yet the future of the Internet will only seek out more competition, fewer regulations and restrictions, and less dependence on older standards. I do believe the Internet could operate just fine without a central DNS authority. Yes, it would be an enormous problem if DNS broke today or even attempted separation, but it won't happen. Those who depend on the voluntary choice of their customers would immediately find a fix in the event of an outage or separation.
The US is wrong in wants to continue to control DNS root services. The UN is even more wrong in thinking taking control would make things better.
In the long run, newer protocols and information sharing services will give people the information they want without the need for DNS. Most people communicating over IM don't even see domain names. Most people communicating over BT don't either. As bandwidth goes up and newer forms of hive-communications are created, we'll see less and less central control.
I remember running my first BBS. 1 node. Local users only. No sharing of data with other BBSes and only 1 user at a time. Then multinode, then FidoNet, then UseNet, then Gopher, then E-mail, then WWW, then ICQ, then Napster, then BT, then ???
Information is getting less centralized or tied to a location in ever faste steps. DNS is ready for replacement.
I'm pretty open about my "Drop the Vote" anti-voting stance, but I do openly support the RLC for their voice. If you like Coleman, consider voicing to his office what you don't like. He's noteably affiliated with the neoconservative war-welfare machine, but I think his support there is wavering. Hes a surprising good listen on CSPAN, but talk is just talk.
The DMCRA is interesting but will end up as a pork conveyor belt. The best way to protect consumers' rights is to destroy laws curtailing them.
Rights can never be provided by law, they can only be destroyed by law.
Norm Coleman ranked very pro-freedom by the RLC. While he's still a Statist, he seems to have a lightly more freedom oriented strategy for the Senate.
The provisions for the Internet being taken over by the UN or any political body will likely bifurcate the Net into multiple separate networks still interconnected but ready to dissolve from those that censor or regulate the information more than the billions of users want.
Seriously, is DNS control even necessary? My 'utopian' internet future doesn't see much need for DNS. Bit-torrent doesn't need it, Google lets me find information anywhere without needing to remember domain names, and portable bookmarks make my life simple.
My Internet doesn't need DNS as it is set up today. E-mail is dependent on DNS for now, but a combination of BitTorrent and LDAP will shut that need off if DNS gets ripped apart.
There are three reasons for government control of DNS:
1. Censorship
2. Regulation/licensing of certain speech (campaign, medical, educational?)
3. Profit!!! (for the cronies who sell domain names)
There is zero need for any regulation. The Internet could be usurped by any big business but isn't. The ultimate proof of anarchy in action. Companies that try to control the users are beaten by those that provide open access. Companies that want to break free from the global structure will anger their users who want access to anyone else. Verizon could separate their phone network completely but its in their best interest to communicate with their competition.
The UN just wants monopoly power through force and coercion. The private corporations want to be #1 but have to constantly compete with others.
This release seems dumb for Intel. No optimized motherboards, outrageous power requirements and a really inefficient core? It isn't even alpha-release worthy. Why would Intel release a product that is just waiting for a poor review? Is the high end market that hungry?
The article didn't need 15 pages to explain Intel's mistakes. Intel will lose more customers to AMD than if they had waited until they had a viable and competitive product.
400W while idling? For sub-standard performance? Yay.
This isn't a paper replacement as it needs constant power. April 06? Vaporware?
I can't see how 4 shades of grey is useful unless it didn't require power to keep the display.
A 14-bit color version would be great for PDAs, watches, car stereos, and digital picture frames, but thinner != better for most purposes.
I think this is a great start, but we're still far from a viable product.
Also, what is the dot pitch, refresh rate, power requirement, and durability? Is there room for improvement?
There are 3 types of counterfeit artists:
1. The casual home counterfeiter. A guy with an inkjet who is 'having fun.' These guys get caught quickly by the secret service.
2. The black market Wal*Mart, a.k.a. the Mob. They reconstitute $1 bills into pulp, reform the cotton into large sheets, and silkscreen new 'old style' $100 bills. By using the real paper and near-perfect ink in the old style bills, they get past the verification pens and bank scanners. Funny thing is, this style of counterfeit is almost dead as credit card fraud is much more lucrative and far safer. Bank draft fraud and money order fraud is easier, too.
3. The Federal Reserve. Yes, Alan Greenspan and friends is actually the #1 counterfeit organization in the world. Because our currency is no longer backed by hard metal, the FRB is allowed to counterfeit billions of new dollars annually. The is legal by acts of Congress, and is not only the biggest reason for inflation, it is also the cause of the stock market bubble and the housing bubble. It also allows the government to finance off budget programs by introducing new currency into circulation.
Incorporating these security dots only helps catch common criminals, not large scale organizations. And the worst violator, the FRB, counterfeits legally.
And yet TFA says some big players are combining. AOL/ICQ did it years ago and always have given me great service.
Early TV standards halted the initial growth of Cable and Satellite. Waiting for a standard for HDTV almost killed it, too.
Early telephone standards made cell phone research take decades. It slowed DSL rollouts and kept features like CID out for a decade, too.
The industries saw the need for new features and the market decided which "standards" were the most desirable.
IM is doing just fine for hundreds of millions of users. If they decide (through millions of individual choices) that they want interoperability, it will happen.
Good comment.
My problem with attempting an open standard is that I don't like committees getting involved during the feature building stages.
Yes, standards can be wise but they an also stifle innovation. How long does it take a committee to add new features to the standard?
My PDA has 3 IM clients and I'm fine with it. I believe they'll all eventually intercommunicate without forcing an open standard early on.
Yay for F/OSS bloatware! (No offense to the poster)
Now if only they could have a floating thumb tack that gives you help whenever you don't need it.
Do people honestly use grammar check? Hasn't it been proven that no grammar checker works well enough to provide a wide cover of the English language?
Personally, when I write an article or something for wide dissemination, I'll send it to a group of writers I know and trust. Peer editing. They do the same when they need a human review. I'm sure there are websites to help others do similar swaps.
The MS Word g/c pisses me off bigtime. I have to disable it or go crazy.
For me, a grammar check is a bloat feature that doesn't add worth to a word processor. This is especially true for technical documents.
Is this a feature needed solely to promote the package (like the "often used" cruise control on every car) to the masses?
I'd rather have a thin distribution that works quickly without consuming massive amounts of RAM and processing power.
Am I alone?
I'm confused. Even if SCO acquires a component, isn't the final F/OSS release of that component still F/OSS per the GPL or whatever license it was released with?
Take said component and keep refining it.
If this is a future worry, adapt the license so that other OSS components remain OSS if future versions are commercialized.
Its a big business conspiracy to become an uncompetitive monopoly. Just like GM, Ford and Dodge have a monopoly on U.S. Produced cars, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL have a complete monopoly on IM services. Just look at how much they charge for their monopoly service!
This guy is totally right. Instead of these 3 expensive monopoly services, we should instead switch to one single service that we know is far more competitive than three monopolies. It is wonderful that he's so unselfish, I'm sure the time he spends working on his company's (check the link on that tirade) software is donated.
While we're breaking down the IM monopoly, we should also tear drop the fruit monopoly that all those grocery stores have, and just grow and share fruit amongst each other in a free and open way. Come by the farm I work for, get a free orange while you peruse our other items for sale. Screw big bad grocery stores! My company gives away oranges!
There's no problem here. This guy is posing his rant in order to generate interest in his company to better secure his job. We should make every car part interoperable between manufacturers, and make every TV the same size so that everyone sees the same picture. I'm sure it won't stifle development.
Now that your PC falls under the chattel definition, does the State have eminent domain power to take my bandwidth and storage to give to Wal*Mart?
federast = federaLIst without the LIe :)
Actually it was a typo but I'm pretending it was funny wordplay.
Honorable [name]:
Thank you for cutting the budget of [department]. It is obvious that you understand our Federast Republic as well as the limits the Constitution sets over your powers.
I am glad that you also understand that the [number] jobs eliminated will reappear in greater numbers in private businesses that will grow stronger from the money taxpayers won't have to spend supporting unconstitutional programs.
I appreciate your ability to restrain your powers and offer your constituents the chance to spend their hard earned money as their households and families need.
Yours truly,
Citizen [your name]
[your address]
One of my main CNC/machining suppliers does 20% of his business with NASA but they account for 95% of his profits.
I recently saw some of his invoices and NASA is typical government waste. Take your $300 toilet seats and $600 screw drivers and double it.
I really want the FOIA to open up every invoice for public consumption in PDF real time. NASA is no friend of the taxpayers.
Is NASA really getting a budget cut or did they just overspend with the cronies again?
Hence why I'd rather see it as a private e-bond rather than a public stock.
My big problem with public stocks is that they seem only valuable if they increase in price. I own zero public stocks. I do own a ton of private shares and bonds in projects so I get not only a nice dividend, but also a real controlled stake in direction.
As an e-bond, WhedonCo owns 100% of the company, but must pay back the bond plus interest at a given time. The bond is just a loan to get things going. I shouldn't have said "share" or "profit" but "coupon" and "interest" is more correct.
If enough interest was shown (money where your mouth is), the project wouldn't need $5M per episode, I think. First, the old budget includes marketing. Bond holders would incur that personally, a la viral marketing. Second, the old budget reflects a portion of risk distributed among many shows, that too can be removed. Lastly, advertising can still be a minor income if its a provision like "Firefly 2.0 brought to you by Linksys Cisco" at the beginning of the program. A more directed ad showed us geeks who helped bring the program back wouldn't be shunned as much as 5 ad segments.
Every product we buy needs long and short term maintenance. Cars need oil, tires, waxing and tinkering under the hood. Software, especially complex operating systems with a ton of third party programs, are no different. As Linux gains features and popularity, it also gains incompatibilities.
Most end users seem to understand and accept some expense that decreases future downtime. Not a single customer of mine refused Microsoft's yearly subscription. Not one refuses to pay my employees' $95/hour invoices for applying all the various first and third party patches.
Back to cars... Does GM repair recalls for free? Sure. But if your new radio doesn't interface with hour Vette, you buy the harness. When Windows is defeated by a new loophole that only occurs from connecting to the web, who's fault is it?
You can always remove your 3rd party radio in your car. Go back to the OEM one. You can stop browsing through AOL using your Intel NIC, get MSN service and only browse MS websites, too.
I've always felt F/OSS users ignore their time value. My personal time is worth $60/hour to me, including rest/sleep. My customers see a return of more valuable time when they pay for maintenance. F/OSS hasn't paid enough of a ROI for me to promote it.
Fun to play with numerical, isn't it?
What a ridiculous article. Retail sales are meaningless without integrating direct sales (Dell, etc). I run two retail stores (not in IT) and if you based anything on my sales and ignored our e-commerce competition, you'd be predictably wrong.
First, retailers will generally maximize margins buy promoting less expensive costing products. E-commerce generally runs tight margins on everything.
Example: Intel Retail PC retails for $799, cost is $619. AMD Retail PC retails for $749, cost is $549. The retailer sees a $10 better margin on the AMD but reduces gross sales. Which one will the consumer pick, generally? Whatever is cheap.
Don't believe any sales figures any more. They're ignorant of the true market, which is retail, e-commerce, eBay, and buying in pieces from your local OEM "wholesaler."
Just basing figures like these on whatever market gives you the best results is more to keep shareholders happy.
Maybe.
I have an interesting idea, maybe I'll get some feedback here.
How about a functional investment ("bond") distribution model for a show like Firefly?
Let's say Whedon needs to see $5M before he attempts online distribution. Instead of trying to merely pre-sell 200,000 $25 yearly subscriptions, maybe offer $25 subscriptions and $100 investment bonds. $100 gets you 1 share (out of 100,000). Assume WhedonCo buys 51,000 at $5.1M for 51% ownership. I'd gladly invest $10,000 for a 0.1% share.
Once production begins, others will likely pay $4/episode or $30/season. I'll make my percentage after overhead, and have a major reason to promote the show to friends and family.
Heck, if I can make $0.01 per subscription and 2M people end up subscribing, that's $20K for me. I'd be happy with that.
Surely, the SEC will screw it up.
...for both parties.
Advertisements in their current form are different than they were 10 years ago. They're tested at regular speed and fast speed. Thought is given to logo placement early before one can click skip.
Yet the distributor doesn't care who pays, as long as someone does. iTunes should consider a survey ad system for buying points. Watch a 60 second ad, answer 5 questions, earn 50 points to use for purchase.
Also, piracy is counterproductive for true fans. If Firefly 2.0 gets on SciFi and 80% of you bootleg it, don't expect a third season. I'll never understand the people here who complain about lack of good content yet have 3000 songs from Limewire.
In the long run, offering multiple acquisition options makes sense. I'll pay a subscription for content I like. I'll pay extra for HD and DD. I'll pay extra for bloopers and outtakes, and maybe for getting it a few days earlier.
Content control doesn't bother me. As long as I can watch it on my TVs at home and on my PDA unlimited times, I'm fine with DRM. Shows requiring deletion after a week I just won't watch.
iTunes won't kill the networks. Freedom of choice will kill those unavoidable to provide what the market wants.
Until government regulates iTunes to protect the networks.