What caused the microsoft monopoly? Microsofts agressive tactics? Yes, but these tactics would never have worked had not there been a perceived value to standardization. Microsoft's threats to DELL and other companies only worked because not being allowed to use windows was a major threat...it wasn't acceptable to go buy a different operating system.
In effect once microsoft had a certain market share it was guaranteed a monopoly because others would buy the software even if it was a worse value just for compatability reasons (hence the reason why this market is in need of government regulation.)
On the other hand the media market values diversity. If all your friends watch CNN you might want to watch ABC merely because you can then talk about what you have seen. It is for this reason that AOL-TIMe-WARNER can never become a huge monopoly. Their very success will generate a market for their competitors (those people who want something differnt).
This is a wonderful scam for them. If you are NBC a million bucks is no big deal if you stand to lose large number of page htis and potential earnings. Thus the FEAR that people will use.tv as widely as.com (and hence they will have to buy the domain back for obscene sums) will force them to buy now.
But this very fear drives every one of their competitors. Therefore they know with virtual certainty that the domain name will take off because all of their competitors will buy one. Thus it is worth even more money.
As to your other point most encryptions are very easy to diffrentiate from true noise. For instance they possess headers well deliminated start and stops of messages etc..
Moreover there is no necesity that encryption is undectable as such. While patterns in the output are *usually* indications of weakness in the crypto this is by no means a guarantee. I could modify DES by making its output 1128 bits with every other bit a 0 with no loss in its security. In fact it may be the case (I don't know if anyone else has superior knowledge please tell me) that it is possible to distingush the output of say DES and Blowfish without having any knowledge of the key or secret message.
No, what I was proposing was that it is impossible to diffrentiate from noise. For instance take a naturally noisy channel such as radio can you add information to such a channel in a way that the additional signal is only reasonably detectable by a party which possesses a secret key.
I imagine it is common for companies/governments to wish to communicate but do not wish others to know they are communicating. Broadcasting an encrypted message would certainly draw sucsipicion but if instead they could add their signal to radio noise on an unused frequency the other party possessing the secret key could then recover the message with no one else being the wiser.
I don't think its impossible for acompany to make money on crypto...just not on conventional forms of cryptography.
For instance despite all this talk about steganography no one seems to have come up with a mathematically secure algorithm for hiding the existance of data. With existing steganographic software it is relatively easy to scan the low bits of a jpeg or etc.. to pull out the data. Or determine that two companies are sending data back and forth.
There seems nothing which makes it impossible to embed a signal in some predetermined sort of noise which is computationally extremly difficult to extract without the proper key (i.e. it resembles noise very very closely). If a company patented such a technique there seems to be no reason they couldn't make money on it.
Actually I wouldn't be surprised if computer programers and other high-tech professions had a much higher incidence of mental illness. First of all people in these professions are much more intelligent and for some reason this seems positively correlated with mental illness.
Secondly computer/scientific activity is by and large a non-social activity. Hence those who for whatever reason such as mentall illness are unable to fit in in their youth are more likely to turn to these pursuits.
Clearly the second ammendment was not intended to and should not be extended to weapons of mass destruction. People should NOT have the right to own nuclear weapons or biological weapons etc.. So we are left with the question of what arms should be allowed.
These weapons and assault weapons were not present at the writing of the declaration so we must interpret what the framers intent in the second ammendment is.
The INTENT of the second ammendment was to allow the citezenship to be armed enough that they could in principle defend themselves against governmental tyranny. I would imagine that a sizeable fraction of americans uprising even with semi-automatic weapons could overthrow the government (remember they are trying to control the populance not annihlate it so they can't use nukes or other indiscrimanate killing technologies).
Now the outlawing of automatic weapons is probably just a publicity plow (has anyone ever seen evididence that the presence of automatic weapons significantly increases the murder rate? People would probably just shoot more with semi-automatics) but from a constitutional perspective is not necesserily unreasonable.
Yes I agree it is quite clear that Napster and other such utilities are used nearly exclusively to break the law (even most of the porn is copyrighted by someone). But this does not mean it is necesserily a bad thing. Being illegal does not make something wrong...all to often our governments have made things illegal which should in fact be legal. We create copyright laws to improve *our* quality of life not because the musician inherintly deserves the money. Eienstein has done the world more good (communication satellites etc..) then any rock band and yet his compensation, like most basic researchers, was no where near that of your average pop band. If you really believe that copying music is wrong because the artist deserves compensation you would send a check to eienstein's estate every time you made a cell phone call. Heck pay 1/2 of the CD cost and send the rest to his estate for his work on developing the theory behind lasers which allow you to play the CD. The claim that we have a moral responsibility to pay the record companies exactly what they ask for the music is absurd. Even given that they deserve compensation for their work it would be hard to accept that the amount of compensation they are due is exactly 14.95 per CD. Copyright is a monopoly. A legal one but still a monopoly. And unlike free markets a monopoly will not adjust its prices for the maximum benifit for the citizens but instead for its own profit. As such monopolies should be regulated for the public good. The government has shown no inclination to do this with copyright instead lengthening it because powerful lobbies make more money. At the same time distribution technoligies have flourished and the customer pool has expanded significantly. The amount of compensation that some copyright holders recieve is order of magnitudes larger then what is necessery to spur creative development. In fact free software development has shown people are willing to do some of this work without any compensation. Napster and Gnutella then function as self regulation. They provide thousands maybe millions with music and joy they wouldn't otherwise have and show no indication of stoping the production of new music. As such they seem a morally well justified pursuit.
What they really should do is make a human look alike robot and see if they can pass him throough the DMV's driving test. No more waiting in lines at the DMV send your robot instead.
Yes, but they probably didn't violate the contract. Their software faithfully observed the region preferences and they did not publish their key. They are probably not legally responsible for the hacking of their software
So sony orders a recall of all PS2's because they have extra features what do you as a customer do? If you were debating on buying a PS2 or not you would rush out to the store now to buy one before the good ones were all gone. As video game consoles are a self-reinforcing phenomenon (you want the same console as your friend does so you can share/play the same games) overall the recall could make them money.
Maybe they face a revocal of there liscense to produce DVD players or other consequence of whatever contract they signed with the rest of the MPAA to get in on DVD.
Slashdot Mirror
What caused the microsoft monopoly? Microsofts agressive tactics? Yes, but these tactics would never have worked had not there been a perceived value to standardization. Microsoft's threats to DELL and other companies only worked because not being allowed to use windows was a major threat...it wasn't acceptable to go buy a different operating system.
In effect once microsoft had a certain market share it was guaranteed a monopoly because others would buy the software even if it was a worse value just for compatability reasons (hence the reason why this market is in need of government regulation.)
On the other hand the media market values diversity. If all your friends watch CNN you might want to watch ABC merely because you can then talk about what you have seen. It is for this reason that AOL-TIMe-WARNER can never become a huge monopoly. Their very success will generate a market for their competitors (those people who want something differnt).
really thats interesting...do you or someone else have a link?
So bidding on pepsi.tv is at 2,300 but I typed in axiom.tv and the bidding starts at 4000
random typing start the bidding at 1000
This is a wonderful scam for them. If you are NBC a million bucks is no big deal if you stand to lose large number of page htis and potential earnings. Thus the FEAR that people will use .tv as widely as .com (and hence they will have to buy the domain back for obscene sums) will force them to buy now.
But this very fear drives every one of their competitors. Therefore they know with virtual certainty that the domain name will take off because all of their competitors will buy one. Thus it is worth even more money.
As to your other point most encryptions are very easy to diffrentiate from true noise. For instance they possess headers well deliminated start and stops of messages etc..
Moreover there is no necesity that encryption is undectable as such. While patterns in the output are *usually* indications of weakness in the crypto this is by no means a guarantee. I could modify DES by making its output 1128 bits with every other bit a 0 with no loss in its security. In fact it may be the case (I don't know if anyone else has superior knowledge please tell me) that it is possible to distingush the output of say DES and Blowfish without having any knowledge of the key or secret message.
No, what I was proposing was that it is impossible to diffrentiate from noise. For instance take a naturally noisy channel such as radio can you add information to such a channel in a way that the additional signal is only reasonably detectable by a party which possesses a secret key.
I imagine it is common for companies/governments to wish to communicate but do not wish others to know they are communicating. Broadcasting an encrypted message would certainly draw sucsipicion but if instead they could add their signal to radio noise on an unused frequency the other party possessing the secret key could then recover the message with no one else being the wiser.
I don't think its impossible for acompany to make money on crypto...just not on conventional forms of cryptography.
For instance despite all this talk about steganography no one seems to have come up with a mathematically secure algorithm for hiding the existance of data. With existing steganographic software it is relatively easy to scan the low bits of a jpeg or etc.. to pull out the data. Or determine that two companies are sending data back and forth.
There seems nothing which makes it impossible to embed a signal in some predetermined sort of noise which is computationally extremly difficult to extract without the proper key (i.e. it resembles noise very very closely). If a company patented such a technique there seems to be no reason they couldn't make money on it.
Really? I stand corrected. If someone could post a link/reference about this It would be much appreciated.
Actually I wouldn't be surprised if computer programers and other high-tech professions had a much higher incidence of mental illness. First of all people in these professions are much more intelligent and for some reason this seems positively correlated with mental illness.
Secondly computer/scientific activity is by and large a non-social activity. Hence those who for whatever reason such as mentall illness are unable to fit in in their youth are more likely to turn to these pursuits.
Clearly the second ammendment was not intended to and should not be extended to weapons of mass destruction. People should NOT have the right to own nuclear weapons or biological weapons etc.. So we are left with the question of what arms should be allowed.
These weapons and assault weapons were not present at the writing of the declaration so we must interpret what the framers intent in the second ammendment is.
The INTENT of the second ammendment was to allow the citezenship to be armed enough that they could in principle defend themselves against governmental tyranny. I would imagine that a sizeable fraction of americans uprising even with semi-automatic weapons could overthrow the government (remember they are trying to control the populance not annihlate it so they can't use nukes or other indiscrimanate killing technologies).
Now the outlawing of automatic weapons is probably just a publicity plow (has anyone ever seen evididence that the presence of automatic weapons significantly increases the murder rate? People would probably just shoot more with semi-automatics) but from a constitutional perspective is not necesserily unreasonable.
Yes I agree it is quite clear that Napster and other such utilities are used nearly exclusively to break the law (even most of the porn is copyrighted by someone). But this does not mean it is necesserily a bad thing. Being illegal does not make something wrong...all to often our governments have made things illegal which should in fact be legal. We create copyright laws to improve *our* quality of life not because the musician inherintly deserves the money. Eienstein has done the world more good (communication satellites etc..) then any rock band and yet his compensation, like most basic researchers, was no where near that of your average pop band. If you really believe that copying music is wrong because the artist deserves compensation you would send a check to eienstein's estate every time you made a cell phone call. Heck pay 1/2 of the CD cost and send the rest to his estate for his work on developing the theory behind lasers which allow you to play the CD. The claim that we have a moral responsibility to pay the record companies exactly what they ask for the music is absurd. Even given that they deserve compensation for their work it would be hard to accept that the amount of compensation they are due is exactly 14.95 per CD. Copyright is a monopoly. A legal one but still a monopoly. And unlike free markets a monopoly will not adjust its prices for the maximum benifit for the citizens but instead for its own profit. As such monopolies should be regulated for the public good. The government has shown no inclination to do this with copyright instead lengthening it because powerful lobbies make more money. At the same time distribution technoligies have flourished and the customer pool has expanded significantly. The amount of compensation that some copyright holders recieve is order of magnitudes larger then what is necessery to spur creative development. In fact free software development has shown people are willing to do some of this work without any compensation. Napster and Gnutella then function as self regulation. They provide thousands maybe millions with music and joy they wouldn't otherwise have and show no indication of stoping the production of new music. As such they seem a morally well justified pursuit.
What they really should do is make a human look alike robot and see if they can pass him throough the DMV's driving test. No more waiting in lines at the DMV send your robot instead.
Yes, but they probably didn't violate the contract. Their software faithfully observed the region preferences and they did not publish their key. They are probably not legally responsible for the hacking of their software
So sony orders a recall of all PS2's because they have extra features what do you as a customer do? If you were debating on buying a PS2 or not you would rush out to the store now to buy one before the good ones were all gone. As video game consoles are a self-reinforcing phenomenon (you want the same console as your friend does so you can share/play the same games) overall the recall could make them money.
Maybe they face a revocal of there liscense to produce DVD players or other consequence of whatever contract they signed with the rest of the MPAA to get in on DVD.