It is not surprising that the two are connected, nor is it neccessary, but it should be applauded when such a correlation appears. Agreed, though I never implied any causation between the two. I simply said it shouldn't be surprising that they contribute a lot.
If we look at Ubuntu/Canonical for instance, by your standards, they should be pretty high on the list, right? In fact, they do not even appear on this list. Canonical may or may not contribute. The data presented (if true) says little about the matter one way or the other. Around 25% of contribution are either from individuals or from unknown groups. Also this data is just for kernel contributions. It's quite possible that they don't contribute much to the kernel but instead contribute elsewhere. There are plenty of projects in need of work in the open source world besides the kernel.
My point here is that distributing a popular distro does not mean you develop a proportional share of the Linux kernel, or any linux software. Exactly. Distro makers sometimes contribute a lot and sometimes don't. All I said was that it shouldn't be surprising that a maker of a popular distro happens to also contribute a lot of code to the kernel.
Novell produces one of the most popular linux distros out there. Is it really surprising to anyone they contribute a lot of changes? Sure they've made a pact with the "devil" but there is no indication they are getting out of linux anytime soon.
Why in the name of heaven would you have to pay a monthly fee for GPS when you don't have to with the cell tower system? I wouldn't. I have a standalone GPS and have no need to pay a monthly surcharge. Depending on your phone you can get a bluetooth gps receiver that for practical purposes is like your cell phone has GPS built in but without the battery drain. Plus I like to actually know where I am. The cell tower system, while better than nothing, rarely gets my location closer than a kilometer from where I actually am. That's not great for something that the whole point is to locate where you actually are. I can't complain about the price (free) but you definitely get what you pay for with that feature.
You're a troll and not a very clever one but I'll have some fun with you.
I don't need any street directions to anywhere, ever. HA! Good one. Tell me another. I love hearing stupid people say stupid things. Only way your claim is true is if you never go anywhere. Are you immobile or incarcerated or just delusional?
I can plan a 1200 mile trip after glancing at a map and arrive at my destination within 60 seconds of my eta. First rule of quality trolling is to make your claims at least slightly credible. Otherwise you just sound like a dumbass.
You get more value out of your GPS than i get e out of my map?? Not a chance. Mathematically impossible... blah blah blah... When they start passing out free garmin units with free maps, you let me know. Mine was a gift. Cost = $0.00 to me. Oooohhh, you didn't think of that did you?
those other utilities you cite are bullshit. What are you gonna do if the freeway is clogged? Get jammed up in feeder traffic? yes, because your precious GPS doesn't know about traffic there. Here's a cluestick for you. Enjoy your next traffic jam! I'll just push a button and route around it. Oh but wait, you said you could glance at a map and arrive at your destination within 60 seconds of your ETA, miraculously avoiding every possible traffic jam and never taking a wrong turn ever. Sorry my bad. I forgot I was conversing with someone with psychic powers and an infallible sense of direction.
In any case, i have yet to meet anyone who has GPS who says they need it. Who said anything about need? Almost no one needs a GPS just like no one needs a cell phone or needs a television or any number of other things I could mention. But they are useful nonetheless. If you want to live with just paper maps, knock yourself out. The rest of us will enjoy living in the 21st century.
we're integrateing hundreds of dollars of technology with a multibillion dollar supporting infrastructure to replace a FOLDED PAPER MAP that we might need to use for TWO MINUTES EVERY THREE YEARS. When your folded map can:
give you street level directions for every road anywhere in ALL of North America and Europe
calculate optimal routes and detours
find the closest Chinese restaurant in a city you've never been to before and give you its phone number so you can order ahead
act as a speaker-phone via bluetooth for your cell phone
play MP3s
tell you that there is traffic ahead on the highway you are driving on
then MAYBE you'll have a decent argument about why maps are superior in every way. Maps are useful to be sure but GPS devices do a lot more than just show where streets are located. I use my GPS almost daily. Bet you I get a lot more value out of my GPS than you do from your map.
I'm assuming you have cell towers near you. Sure, when driving you'll need more accurate information than the LBS provides. But on foot, a map of the surrounding area should be good enough for most. It's certainly better than nothing but in my experience the cell phone triangulation is pretty bad at figuring out where you really are. When I use Google maps on my cell phone it's pretty rare that I'm even within a kilometer of where it thinks I am. Takes a lot of searching to find your actual location. And I'm in a major metro area with pretty good cell phone coverage flat terrain and no large buildings in the way. Even with Wifi assistance it's still often pretty imprecise. Maybe I'm just spoiled by having an actual GPS but I'm not terribly impressed by the maps service through google. For the price I can't complain though.
It's great for in-car use where it's on power, but unless apple have found a GPS chipset that is able to work on much lower power than the current ones I wouldn't expect it in an iphone in the near future. No argument on the battery drain, though generally if I'm outside a car I generally don't need the GPS to be active for many hours in a row. If I did I probably would be carrying a dedicated GPS device anyway. One specially designed for hiking or whatever else I'm doing at that time. I think an integrated device would work if you could easily turn the GPS functions off when not in use.
Besides i don't want GPS built in. As GPS uses a ton a battery power. I want a Bluetooth, or other dongle that occasionally sends GPS data. Why can't I get a car dock, with a built in GPS receiver? That's why I bought a Nokia E70 instead of an iPhone. This device from Garmin might do what you are looking for. Other manufacturers make similar devices if you don't like that one. Not available for the iPhone yet though.
I would say though that if you are going the separate device route AND only going to use the GPS in the car, you might just consider getting a stand alone GPS. I have one for driving and it works brilliantly. Integration with my phone would be nifty but isn't really necessary if you just use it in the car. If you plan to use the GPS outside a car though I'm totally with you.
it [let's find a restaurant!] speaks to what seems to me to be a pretty narrow market/lifestyle segment. Maybe for the itenerant road warrior type. For me, i know every decent restaurant within miles (west surburban chicagoland) or at least enough. ditto in Chicago. You don't sound like someone who travels much. If you never leave the area where you live, no a GPS isn't going to help you much. But most of the population travels at least occasionally and some of us travel quite a lot. I have a Garmin nuvi which I use all the time to find places to eat, hotels, parks, intersections, offices and of course for directions. I travel a fair bit (both work and pleasure) and a GPS is extremely useful when I do. I also just moved to a new city and it made it MUCH easier to learn my way around. If I could get the same features in my phone that would be even more useful. I never need directions anymore, just a destination address. It's great that you live in Chicago where there are wonderful options for dining all over the place. But I can tell you most of the country isn't like that. Even in Chicago it's often hard to find something if you don't know the city. (yes I've been there many times) Can you get by without a GPS? Of course. But just like you can get by without a computer it's still pretty handy if you have one available.
With that said, I don't understand why the hell people keep begging for GPS... Because GPS is a VERY logical addition to a mobile device. Arguably more logical than a music player for many people. Any business traveler would likely find a GPS enabled phone (with appropriate navigation software) to be extremely useful. I think the GPS is the next logical device to see serious integration into smartphones (after PDAs and MP3 players) because it is such an obvious fit for mobile users.
I have a Garmin nuvi 660 and a Nokia E70. Both are fine devices. But there are MANY times when carrying my GPS is impractical (basically anytime I'm not in a car) and having a phone with even a subset of the Garmin's abilities would be handy. I can do the google maps thing same as the iPhone, but it is not very useful especially compared with a real GPS. Personally I don't listen to much music but a GPS built in to my cell phone (again, with appropriate navigation software) would be a huge win for me. One of the reasons I did not buy an iPhone was because it didn't have any built in GPS capabilities and I found a way to get my Nokia to integrate (via bluetooth) with a compact GPS. Not a perfect solution but a good one. Should the iPhone get some good GPS capabilities that would make it a LOT more attractive to me.
I've gotten the impression that one of the big reasons why American companies run into all these problems is because executives and management all have business or economic degrees. Bob Nardelli (the fellow you used as an example) joined GE in 1971 as an entry-level manufacturing engineer. I think you would be VERY surprised at the diversity of backgrounds in top management. Yes many do have business degrees but there is a good reason for that. If you don't understand finance and accounting you can NOT run a major corporation. Finance and accounting are to managers what math is to physicists or reading is to, well... anyone. You can't get far without some kind of training. It can be formal (MBA) or informal (experience) but you need to get it somewhere.
What in the hell does a home improvement retailer have to do with an automobile manufacturer? More than you might think. I feel I can say this with some authority since I've worked both auto and retail. That said I don't think you understand the CEO's job. Setting the strategic direction for a company does NOT require a detailed understanding of every detail of the products being sold. If it were, companies the size of Chrysler and Home Depot could never exist.
To these people everything is "product". It's an abstraction with no bearing on reality. You're right that it is an abstraction but you're wrong about it having no bearing on reality. Bob Nardelli was also a candidate for the top spot at General Electric. General Electric is arguably the best company in the world at developing management talent and they have an incredibly diverse portfolio of companies. Managers regularly jump between industries that are unrelated and no one would argue that GE does not do quite well with that strategy. The reason it works is because the skills you need to manage well are to a large degree transferable. And the biggest, most important job of ANY manager is managing people. Some of the best managers I know aren't actually very good at the technical aspects of the products they are charged with but they are VERY good at identifying people who are and helping those people succeed.
Another example regarding abstration. I'm an industrial engineer" myself. My profession would never exist if business systems could not be abstracted. There are operations research problems in auto manufacturing as well as retail. I used to do a lot of Monte Carlo simulation which I can and have used to solve problems in both manufacturing and finance. All the programming I've done I can use in any number of fields. A lot of skills are transferable between industries. Why should management be any different?
One could argue that the security guard is the most important person at a baseball field... One could but then one would be missing the point of my argument. There is lots of talent and creativity in the music business and not all (or even most) of it is in the making of the music itself.
Major brands, like Coke and P&G, make Walmart bend to their wishes. Sales of Coke at Walmart are a drop in the bucket for Coke, but if Walmart were to carry only Pepsi, they'd lose customers who came in there expecting to buy their Coke. The result? Both Coke and Pepsi don't drop their prices. Where'd you get this idea? Pepsi get 11% of their sales from Walmart and Coke is similar. General Mills gets 16%, Kraft gets 14% and P&G get 17%. (Sources: here and here) Coke and Pepsi get asked to drop prices and make other concessions constantly.
Conversely Walmarts largest supplier (P&G) accounts for less than 2% of Walmart's sales. Who do you think has the upper hand in this relationship? (17% vs 2%) Walmart doesn't have to drop their products entirely to REALLY hurt any of these suppliers.
None of the individuals in the packaging process are creating the key component of a product that'll earn millions. Without those individuals and their machines there is NO product. It might not be as creative (though I would argue the engineering requires just as much talent) but it's every bit as vital.
If an ablum was that easy to turn out, there would be no superstars. I think the success of "manufactured" groups like Milli Vanilli and boy bands speaks otherwise. It's not as hard to turn out popular music as most suppose. (Please note I did not say "good" music - different discussion)
High overhead isn't actually shocking.
on
Must a CD Cost $15.99?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You're saying that it costs the music industry three times as much as the whole process of creating a single CD to maintain all the CD making equipment, and pay all the guys to run it. It wouldn't be as shocking as you think. I'm more familiar with software companies so I'll use their income statements as an example because they are similar in a lot of ways and it's hard to get clean financial numbers from the labels. Only 10-30% of the costs of ANY software company is in the actual engineering and manufacturing. The rest is sales, marketing and overhead. Varies a little depending on the company but it's pretty similar. Don't take my word for it, lookitup. I expect the music industry has a similar cost structure with the added wrinkle of royalties. The cost of producing the actual music is relatively small compared with the cost of sales, distribution, marketing and overhead. I'm NOT saying their overhead isn't bloated (I think it is) I'm just saying I would fully expect overhead to be larger than production costs.
The producer of an item should always make more money than any other person involved in the process. Producing something isn't always the most valuable thing you can do with a product. Sure it's a vital step but only one of many. Manufacturing, distribution and sales are all equally important. Without any of them there is no product to buy. It's not like you can dispense with any of them and sometimes the music simply isn't the hardest problem to solve.
Your idea that the producer/manufacturer should automatically get the most money in the value chain is commendable and idealistic but demonstrably wrong. Music is a commodity product when you sell through a channel like Walmart. The physical product (the CD) is effectively identical regardless of artist and there are easy substitutes for most popular music. Brittney Spear may be popular but there is lots of other bubble-gum pop if her album isn't there. I know, you're thinking "but ArtistX is unique" which is true from an artistic standpoint but all it does is reduce the substitutability of the product slightly, never completely. You might like ArtistX better but you'll listen to ArtistY and ArtistZ.
A popular way and in my opinion good way to begin to understand how different parties can capture part of the value chain is to look at Porter's Five Forces. A firm's strategic position relies on a lot of things besides who made what and the music industry is no different.
I guess "https:// does not work for your grandma? HTTPS at best only protects data in transit from eavesdropping and man in the middle attacks. It does nothing for the data on either end of the transmission. While http over ssl is important it solves only a very specific problem for a narrow range of attacks and only when implemented properly.
I'm listening but I've yet to hear anyone give an approachable (to non geeks) explanation of public key encryption, revocation lists, key length, algorithm choice and the rest of the details required to genuinely secure communications and data. I'm geeky enough and paranoid enough to go to the trouble but almost everyone I know isn't.
Sure PGP for email is ridiculously complex. It does not have to be , however. Then why isn't it easy already? Surely someone, somewhere would like their communications to be secured in an easy to use fashion. Maybe you are right but my belief is that it's just a hard problem to make easy. Encrypting data and doing it properly is complicated and so far no one has been able to make it easy outside of rare corner cases. And even if they did find a way to make it easy, there are network effects hindering adoption. I can't use enigmail because no one I communicate with uses it and I can't force them to adopt enigmail.
Try enigmail. I have but that's not really the problem. The problem is to get anyone else to use enigmail. No one I send messages to is paranoid enough to care. Heck I have a relative who is the director of a competitive intelligence service for a major corporation who cannot be bothered to encrypt email communications.
Worse, for most of them even enigmail (or any other solution - not picking on enigmail here) is still too hard to use. It needs to be COMPLETELY transparent and that basically defeats the whole point. It's like putting locks on your door but giving out a special key that is too hard for anyone to actually be bothered to use. So they just leave the door unlocked. People have to be willing AND able to understand how to operate the lock or they won't bother.
Perfect time to consider PGP. When you can figure out a way to make public key encryption so easy even my mother can use it I'll be happy to try. I'd love to use it but the person on the other end of the message has to be willing to try too. I haven't found anyone I correspond with yet willing to jump through the hoops required. Maybe you've had better luck than I have.
Never mind the fact that almost no one except serious geeks have even heard of, much less actually understands, public key encryption.
Linux users don't play games much because there aren't many games on linux. Logically it follows that the things that attracted linux users to linux are applications other than gaming. It's a self selecting population. Furthermore there is the problem of network effects for game players and developers. Most games are going to be developed for the platform(s) used by the largest groups of game players which presently are consoles and the Windows operating system. Sure, cross platform games can be developed but the economic trade offs are generally make the investment unattractive. Plus if the users of linux generally are interested in things other than games, why develop games for that platform?
Then there is the problem of development tools. So many man years have gone into tool development for games on platforms other than linux that it is hard to justify the investment. Then there is developer talent. Most game developers have lots of expertise in game development on platforms other than linux. Sure developers could make the investment but the return just doesn't look attractive. There is little competitive advantage to be gained by developing the tools and expertise in house for a very marginal market. If they help with externally developed tools they potentially have a free rider problem. Not insurmountable and not always a problem (heck open source thrives in spite of it) but it is a factor to consider. What it comes down to is that hiring the development staff, getting adequate tools, and then selling enough extra copies of a game to get a return on that investment appears to be quite difficult on linux. It's not that it is technically impossible, just that it is economically unattractive right now. Only thing that will change that equation is if the market share of linux increases and increases significantly.
How is anyone supposed to get experience if the only people hiring require it? That's not unique to IT. Finance jobs and lots of other professions are like that too. In the finance world they are overly specialized and basically won't hire anyone who hasn't already done the exact job. Minimum 2 years experience with a very specific job description. Got a non-traditional background? Better go get some useless certification (CPA, CMA, CFA, etc) to even get a hint of interest. Check out the postings sometime. Virtually every finance/accounting job will require at least 2 years experience in that specific role. No one wants to train.
Speaking for myself I have an engineering degree, 10+ years experience as a number crunching engineer/consultant and manager, two masters degrees including one in finance. Still, I would have a very hard time getting interviews in finance because my background is not a traditional one. When I looked for such positions I'd either be told I was too inexperienced or overqualified every time. Astonishing but true. Now I just run my own business and don't care. Personally I blame HR departments most of which I find to be remarkably incompetent, but perhaps that's just me being bitter...
Software is the only thing you can have both a patent AND a copyright on. I agree that software patents are by and large a bad idea but your claim of exclusivity between patents and copyright is demonstrably not true. It's been possible for a long time to have both a design patent and a copyright on the same item. It's uncommon I'll grant you, but definitely possible.
Double blind feedback allows for honest opinions. Your mistake is assuming people on eBay are honest. Don't be so naive as to think double blind feedback would be fair or honest. It frequently isn't fair even when people know that you can retaliate. People aren't rational, they aren't always fair and they frequently aren't nice.
I've sold over 15,000 items on eBay. I tried to be honest and fair and about 95% of people are good decent folks. As for the rest? Take your pick of: rude, dishonest, idiotic, incompetent, lazy, mean, criminal or any combination of the above. As a seller I've run into just about every kind of scam and rude jerk you can imagine. I've had a $6000 item stolen off the back of the UPS truck and then sold a year later on eBay. (no the police didn't care - we tried) I've had people leave negative feedback about the speed of shipping less than one minute after the auction closed and before paying. I've seen every kind of scummy fake seller you can imagine and every kind of fraudulent buyer. eBay and PayPal are generally unhelpful and uncaring. The moderation system is too unsophisticated to really be very valuable most of the time. As a seller it is a hindrance when you are new (everyone threatens you) and a weapon when you have a lot of feedbacks. Same thing as a buyer. Plus any power seller doing a lot of selling doesn't really have time to leave lots of accurate feedback. It's not that they wouldn't, there simply aren't enough hours in the day. No, sad to say but while double blind feedback has advantages, it won't actually solve the feedback problem.
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Novell produces one of the most popular linux distros out there. Is it really surprising to anyone they contribute a lot of changes? Sure they've made a pact with the "devil" but there is no indication they are getting out of linux anytime soon.
In case you were wondering what Rule 11 is like I was...
then MAYBE you'll have a decent argument about why maps are superior in every way. Maps are useful to be sure but GPS devices do a lot more than just show where streets are located. I use my GPS almost daily. Bet you I get a lot more value out of my GPS than you do from your map.
I would say though that if you are going the separate device route AND only going to use the GPS in the car, you might just consider getting a stand alone GPS. I have one for driving and it works brilliantly. Integration with my phone would be nifty but isn't really necessary if you just use it in the car. If you plan to use the GPS outside a car though I'm totally with you.
I have a Garmin nuvi 660 and a Nokia E70. Both are fine devices. But there are MANY times when carrying my GPS is impractical (basically anytime I'm not in a car) and having a phone with even a subset of the Garmin's abilities would be handy. I can do the google maps thing same as the iPhone, but it is not very useful especially compared with a real GPS. Personally I don't listen to much music but a GPS built in to my cell phone (again, with appropriate navigation software) would be a huge win for me. One of the reasons I did not buy an iPhone was because it didn't have any built in GPS capabilities and I found a way to get my Nokia to integrate (via bluetooth) with a compact GPS. Not a perfect solution but a good one. Should the iPhone get some good GPS capabilities that would make it a LOT more attractive to me.
Another example regarding abstration. I'm an industrial engineer" myself. My profession would never exist if business systems could not be abstracted. There are operations research problems in auto manufacturing as well as retail. I used to do a lot of Monte Carlo simulation which I can and have used to solve problems in both manufacturing and finance. All the programming I've done I can use in any number of fields. A lot of skills are transferable between industries. Why should management be any different?
Conversely Walmarts largest supplier (P&G) accounts for less than 2% of Walmart's sales. Who do you think has the upper hand in this relationship? (17% vs 2%) Walmart doesn't have to drop their products entirely to REALLY hurt any of these suppliers.
Your idea that the producer/manufacturer should automatically get the most money in the value chain is commendable and idealistic but demonstrably wrong. Music is a commodity product when you sell through a channel like Walmart. The physical product (the CD) is effectively identical regardless of artist and there are easy substitutes for most popular music. Brittney Spear may be popular but there is lots of other bubble-gum pop if her album isn't there. I know, you're thinking "but ArtistX is unique" which is true from an artistic standpoint but all it does is reduce the substitutability of the product slightly, never completely. You might like ArtistX better but you'll listen to ArtistY and ArtistZ.
A popular way and in my opinion good way to begin to understand how different parties can capture part of the value chain is to look at Porter's Five Forces. A firm's strategic position relies on a lot of things besides who made what and the music industry is no different.
I'm listening but I've yet to hear anyone give an approachable (to non geeks) explanation of public key encryption, revocation lists, key length, algorithm choice and the rest of the details required to genuinely secure communications and data. I'm geeky enough and paranoid enough to go to the trouble but almost everyone I know isn't. Sure PGP for email is ridiculously complex. It does not have to be , however. Then why isn't it easy already? Surely someone, somewhere would like their communications to be secured in an easy to use fashion. Maybe you are right but my belief is that it's just a hard problem to make easy. Encrypting data and doing it properly is complicated and so far no one has been able to make it easy outside of rare corner cases. And even if they did find a way to make it easy, there are network effects hindering adoption. I can't use enigmail because no one I communicate with uses it and I can't force them to adopt enigmail.
Worse, for most of them even enigmail (or any other solution - not picking on enigmail here) is still too hard to use. It needs to be COMPLETELY transparent and that basically defeats the whole point. It's like putting locks on your door but giving out a special key that is too hard for anyone to actually be bothered to use. So they just leave the door unlocked. People have to be willing AND able to understand how to operate the lock or they won't bother.
Never mind the fact that almost no one except serious geeks have even heard of, much less actually understands, public key encryption.
Linux users don't play games much because there aren't many games on linux. Logically it follows that the things that attracted linux users to linux are applications other than gaming. It's a self selecting population. Furthermore there is the problem of network effects for game players and developers. Most games are going to be developed for the platform(s) used by the largest groups of game players which presently are consoles and the Windows operating system. Sure, cross platform games can be developed but the economic trade offs are generally make the investment unattractive. Plus if the users of linux generally are interested in things other than games, why develop games for that platform?
Then there is the problem of development tools. So many man years have gone into tool development for games on platforms other than linux that it is hard to justify the investment. Then there is developer talent. Most game developers have lots of expertise in game development on platforms other than linux. Sure developers could make the investment but the return just doesn't look attractive. There is little competitive advantage to be gained by developing the tools and expertise in house for a very marginal market. If they help with externally developed tools they potentially have a free rider problem. Not insurmountable and not always a problem (heck open source thrives in spite of it) but it is a factor to consider. What it comes down to is that hiring the development staff, getting adequate tools, and then selling enough extra copies of a game to get a return on that investment appears to be quite difficult on linux. It's not that it is technically impossible, just that it is economically unattractive right now. Only thing that will change that equation is if the market share of linux increases and increases significantly.
Speaking for myself I have an engineering degree, 10+ years experience as a number crunching engineer/consultant and manager, two masters degrees including one in finance. Still, I would have a very hard time getting interviews in finance because my background is not a traditional one. When I looked for such positions I'd either be told I was too inexperienced or overqualified every time. Astonishing but true. Now I just run my own business and don't care. Personally I blame HR departments most of which I find to be remarkably incompetent, but perhaps that's just me being bitter...
not true. It's been possible for a long time to have both a design patent and a copyright on the same item. It's uncommon I'll grant you, but definitely possible.
I've sold over 15,000 items on eBay. I tried to be honest and fair and about 95% of people are good decent folks. As for the rest? Take your pick of: rude, dishonest, idiotic, incompetent, lazy, mean, criminal or any combination of the above. As a seller I've run into just about every kind of scam and rude jerk you can imagine. I've had a $6000 item stolen off the back of the UPS truck and then sold a year later on eBay. (no the police didn't care - we tried) I've had people leave negative feedback about the speed of shipping less than one minute after the auction closed and before paying. I've seen every kind of scummy fake seller you can imagine and every kind of fraudulent buyer. eBay and PayPal are generally unhelpful and uncaring. The moderation system is too unsophisticated to really be very valuable most of the time. As a seller it is a hindrance when you are new (everyone threatens you) and a weapon when you have a lot of feedbacks. Same thing as a buyer. Plus any power seller doing a lot of selling doesn't really have time to leave lots of accurate feedback. It's not that they wouldn't, there simply aren't enough hours in the day. No, sad to say but while double blind feedback has advantages, it won't actually solve the feedback problem.