Be careful. On many levels this IS a civil rights issue. Think about it. Different people have different opinions but copyright and related issues such as fair use ARE civil rights issues in addition to being economic issues. You can't completely separate them.
Like it or not, copyright law is a fundmental pillar of the modern worldwide economy. Software, media, entertainment, publishing, advertising, retail, and even manufacturing all depend on copyright law to varying degrees to efficiently function. You can make a reasonable arguement that copyright law is the fundamental reason the companies that made the computer and software I'm using on right now are able to exist. There is nothing wrong or immoral with that in principle. Everyone reading this has benefited from copyright law to a meaningful degree. Used properly, copyright law enhances economic prosperity and creates an environment of creativity where the works of others are respected and individuals and society both benefit. Used improperly, copyright law concentrates power in the hands of greedy individuals and corporations, unnecessarily criminalies otherwise sensible behavior, and stifles the creative and economic progress of individuals and society. That sounds a lot like a civil rights issue to me.
Now is this company violating US (and most of the world's) copyright laws? From what I can see absolutely. I have little sympathy for those protecting obsolete/harmful laws for their own profit (i.e. the RIAA) or those who knowingly break the law for their own selfish gain without trying to change the law for the benefit of everyone (i.e. Napster). I'm not intimately familiar with them but if Allomp3.com is fighting for reaonable limits and uses for copyright law then I have no quarrel with them, though I doubt that is the case. More likely they are simply a small firm profiting from the work of others while providing little or no return compensation.
My opinion is that it doesn't much matter which calendar you you. I've tried a bunch of them (Google Calendar, Palm Desktop, Sunbird, Outlook, Lotus Notes, Groupwise, Plaxo, etc...) and the problem isn't typically with a given calendar's capabilities. The problem is that they don't work with each other, especially if you want to use a PDA. Palm Desktop is incompatible with Outlook which is incompatible with Sunbird, etc... Most third party software seems to be written with Outlook/Exchange in mind. iCal is a nice "standard" but it has a minority of marketshare and hence doesn't get enough developer attention. Furthermore, MS isn't about to open up Outlook or Exchange to help matters. Your employer problably uses a different calendar than mine which makes life difficult if you are a consultant or simply have chosen a different calendar for your own use than your company's standard.
I have a Palm Tungsten T3 but it's not very useful because I have to maintain 2-3 incompatible calendars to keep it useful. Import/Export is simply not a solution unless you are changing calendars and dumping the old one. Google Calendar is nice but it doesn't efficiently exchange data with my desktop calendar, work calendar and pda. It's got potential but but we'll see where it goes. Few/none of the calendar makers have shown any inclination to work together so far (customer lock in and all that) so I'm not optimistic.
...Patents are not expensive, patent lawyers are. You can file a patent as an individual for a few hundred dollars...
That's a distinction without a difference. In practical terms, nobody files a patent without consulting a lawyer who specializes in patent law. Why? So the patent will hold up in court and to improve the chances of it getting approved. If it's valuable enough to bother patenting, it's worth consulting a lawywer. If you can't afford a laywer, your patent is effectively worthless anyway because you can't enforce the patent.
I make my living off of eBay. It's a great marketplace but its got its problems. We all know about fradulent sellers. Makes life difficult for folks like us with over 5000 positive feedbacks and a 99.7% rating. But let me clue you, there are probably more fradulent buyers than sellers. Give a credit card # over the phone? Charges (yes legit ones too) will be reversed without a signature. PayPal payment? Just say "not as described" and PayPal will give your money back, almost no questions asked. Only way to be sure of payment is to demand a Money Order but then you lose honest buyers and still get people trying to pass fake Money Orders to you. Sure there are problem sellers but trust me, it's no better and possibly worse on the buyer side.
We deal with this every day. eBay is generally not much help. Oh, they're aware of it but they don't have the resources to fight it all. And eBay's own policies are generally counter productive. eBay caters to the (false) notion that they are "leveling the playing field" by letting the little guy compete. This means they treat a 12 person company like ours the same as a guy in the basement. Well guess what? We're not the same. You combat fraud by having professional companies sell stuff and treating them well, not by assuming all sellers are the same and busting the ones you catch doing something bad. We've sold nearly a million in merchandise in the last few months with highly professional auctions. We've introduced hundreds of people to eBay and often have people call us thinking we *are* eBay! We are exactly the sort of folks eBay should be encouraging but eBay doesn't. We bring in thousands of dollars a week to eBay in fees and we're somehow the same as the guy in his basement with 3 feedbacks? (and before someone asks, no their powerseller program frankly is not much help) eBay has been unwilling to acknowledge that not all sellers are created equal and that size DOES matter. (go ahead make your dirty jokes...)
How's this for absurd... Every account on eBay is a personal account. Companies like Sears (not necessarily them but companies like them) have inquired about using eBay but they can't because they aren't about to use an account tied to a single person. eBay doesn't set security policies that make sense either. shill bidding but their policies don't work when you get large companies with lots of employees. Drop shop franchises regularly get busted for innocent bidding on items. Set up a kiosk to sign people up for eBay? You'll kicked off for shill bidding as soon as they buy something. Of course fraud is a problem but eBay's reponses are just just hastily implemented band aids that don't really stop the problem. The only long term way to fight fraud on eBay is to cultivate companies with real professionalism. If eBay has a weakness it will be a failure to address the needs of real companies trying to use their service. So far they are doing a miserable job of it.
Another problem is that doctors have to be careful to avoid ethical conflicts. Doctors feel they have an obligation to provide the best medical care possible, whatever the cost. It's very easy to let money corrupt how one treats patients. It's laudable and the ethically proper thing to do.
That wasn't phrased quite right. For the record I'm not implying that it's ok to let money corrupt how a doctor treats patients.
However, med school does not teach you Programming/Networking/System Diagnosis and Repair. It appears to have barely taught management.
Let me add to this. I'm about to talk in generalities which often don't apply to particular individuals but which anyone who has spent a lot of time around doctors will probably recognize. I work with doctors often and am married to one. I have the utmost respect for them as people, for what they do and for how hard they work.
Doctors aren't "barely taught management", they aren't taught it *at all* in many cases and certainly not formally. The medical school faculty often has little/no finacial or business experience beyond writing grant proposals so there is no one to learn from. The first time most of them see a balance sheet or a budget is post-residency. Doctors usually learn people management through the experience of a pretty severe hazing process called med-school/residency. In some ways it's understandable since learning medicine is incredibly demanding and it's frankly unreasonable to expect them to pick up a MBA along the way. (though some do...) Oh, there are some feeble efforts to integrate some business training here and there but it's nothing coherent or especially helpful. Ask most residents what contribution margin or EBITDA is and they'll look at you like you've grown horns.
Often a reason many doctors are bad managers is due to personality traits. Many have a bit of a god complex. They're incredibly smart and have typically suceeded at everything they've done their whole life. This isn't entirely bad as patients don't like doctors who seem unsure of themselves. Plus to do some of the things they do (i.e. brain surgery), they have to have confidence coming out their ears. They couldn't survive otherwise. But know-it-all tendancies combined with their lack of knowledge business/engineering knowledge is regularly a bad combination from a management standpoint.
Some specialties (surgery in particular) are known for attracting individuals with excellent technical but poor interpersonal skills. (Sound familiar to anyone here?...) Many do become good managers in time but they learn it through either natural aptitude or through long experience rather than through a curiculum.
Another problem is that doctors have to be careful to avoid ethical conflicts. Doctors feel they have an obligation to provide the best medical care possible, whatever the cost. It's very easy to let money corrupt how one treats patients. It's laudable and the ethically proper thing to do. Of course the obvious problem is that it's impossible to afford to do everything possible for every patient. There simply isn't enough money out there. So instead of trying to do the most for the most, too many do their impression of an ostrich on financial matters and complain loudly whenever anyone tells them "no". Since they are typically in charge, many aren't accustomed to having to justify their actions. It's a difficult situation to be sure but one that deserves more attention than it gets.
From a computer/technical standpoint, most doctors I know only know enough about computers to look up information, write the odd document in word and maybe can use excel or powerpoint. Not that they couldn't learn more, they're certainly smart enough. They just aren't interested and/or don't have the time. Not exactly shocking that they tend to make poor IT managers, especially in light of some of the previous common personality traits I've mentioned.
"I don't think the GPL is the principal reason for Linux's success..."
Someone's been hanging around too many honest engineers. This statement grossly underestimates the selfishness of people and corporations as well as the impact of a strong legal system. Look, I'm not saying the GPL is the only important factor but I can't logically see linux existing in anywhere near its current form without it. Even if most individuals would respect other people's work (and that's retardedly naive) some people and most corporations will not. In fact, corporate management has a fiduciary duty to make as much profit as possible for their shareholders and they're under a lot of pressure to do it. There are MUCH easier (and proven) ways to make high margin profits with software than the open source model. Without legal teeth to enforce keeping software in the community it simply wouldn't happen. It's pretty safe to assume that nearly all people and companies act in their short term self interest first and foremost. Always. No exceptions.
I couldn't bear to read the whole thing. Example:...Certainly a lot of our componentization efforts, and subsequently the tooling to support those componentization efforts, are focused on the core enabling.
I stopped reading after that. Too much consultant speak even if the content is good. And I've been a consultant for years...
Here's my problem with it: it's bad for consumers.
I disagree and so do most economists. True, not everyone gets the same price but that's ok. Consumers don't have a right to buy things at zero markup just because it would benefit them; that would put every company out of business. Nor do consumers have to agree to buy things at a ridiculous markup. A trade is a negotiated agreement. It's up to you and you alone to decide whether something is worth the asking price. You might regret it later but that's your fault for not doing a better job negotiating. Put simply, if the price is agreeable to you by definition that cannot be unfair.
The reason markets work well for consumers is because the market sets the price.
A "market" isn't a concious entity and doesn't make decisions. Markets don't "set" prices. A market is a collective group of individual trades, of which each involved party is ostensibly attempting to maximize his own benefit. If pricing information is transparent you may know what others were willing to pay, but sometimes this information isn't available. For example, how much is a piece of art worth? Hard to say since it is very subjective and what others paid isn't usually known. But ultimately what it is worth is whatever the buyer and seller are willing to agree to.
Even though there isn't time for an individual to research every purchase, they don't have to, becasue so long as a certain percentage of consumers do notice, the price will be competitive.
I think you are trying to explain market liquidity and you may be confusing this idea with the popular but useless notion of a "fair" price. Liquidity has little to do with how much time people are willing to put into trades. Markets are liquid because there are large numbers of buyers and sellers interacting.
As for a "fair" price, you have to think about what fair means. What is fair? If you ask an economist, any time a buyer and seller agree to a price, that is what that good/service is worth at that moment. It is by definition a fair price because both parties voluntarily agreed to it. This has nothing to do with markets per se because markets are just a collection of individual trades.
Price discrimination places the burden of researching every decision on individual consumers.
Why do you think it is someone else's responsibility to decide what something is worth to you? I don't know or care what you think something is worth, and I certainly don't want to be bothered trying to find out. If you are happy with the price someone is asking for a good or service you will pay it. If you aren't you won't. Like it or not, this IS a burden the consumer is supposed to bear. The only one who can decide whether a price is fair is you!
----------- Please note that in all the above I'm assuming that there are no coersive forces or fraud at work nor a monopoly or monopsony is involved. Some regulation is necessary to keep markets transparent and liquid and in those cases we need third parties (usually government) to keep everything on the up and up.
I know some of you don't like the idea of Tablet PC but I think they are terrific personally. I've always wished that Apple would dump their Newton technology into a Tablet style machine. It would be fantastic for note taking during meetings and would allow me to better edit and distribute my notes. Not to mention the ones with the foldable keyboards are a more flexible form factor for mobile professionals like me. And I'd rather use a Mac than Windows with its underlying unix goodness and sweet interface.
Who knows if we'll ever see it though. It's not clear if there is a big enough market (I think there is but the products aren't good enough yet) and Steve Jobs just doesn't seem fond of the idea. But if anyone could really make it work, I think it would be Apple. Guess I have to keep dreaming...
Yahoo Finance shows Sun as profitable with a P/E of 19 right now...low for a tech company.
So? They aren't very profitable so we shouldn't expect a high P/E. They might be in the black but they only made $18 million in net income last quarter; basically breakeven on $2.8 billion in revenue. And they lost $147 million the previous quarter. P/E ratios can be useful but they are HIGHLY overrated as a means to compare companies. Plus their stock price is in the crapper at $3.76. Perhaps it's a bargin at that price but the market is pretty smart and companies as heavily traded as SUNW don't fall close to penny stock valuations because they are doing well.
Transition its business model to what? Sun has always sold (and resold) storage solutions.
There is a difference between reselling something and focusing on it. IBM used to make most of their money selling hardware. They've always sold services but now they focused on it. Sun has always sold storage but now it will be a MUCH bigger part of their business. Hence their business strategy will have to change.
I'll be honest, I don't really care if an LCD monitor costs me an extra $100 if it does what I want and I can get it when I want it.
That's totally different. I am also willing to pay an extra $100 to get a "better" monitor. But the post you replied to talks about paying an extra $100 to get the exact same monitor.
Where did you read anything about a "better" monitor? Not from anything I wrote. I was specificaly writing about paying different prices for the exact same product. That's what price discrimination is. It occurs all the time, everywhere in the world and it is ok. You want a better price? ASK for it. Odds are you'll get it. If they want your business, they'll negotiate with you since a sale, even at a reduced profit is normally better than no sale at all.
Every transaction is a negotiation. Most things we buy are covered under laws like the Uniform Commercial Code which amount to prenegotiated terms. Don't like those terms? You can negotiate with the other party to change them so long as you don't break any laws in the process. We're just so used to ignoring all the terms of sale that we often aren't aware that we've just conducted a negotiation every time we go to the cash register.
I don't know much about finances in large businesses, but is 8.6% profit on sales considered good? Or is it just that in the case of Sun, any profit is good?
Depends on the business. For a manufacturing business a net profit of 8% might be outstanding. For a software business 8% net profit is pretty bad usually. In this case, 8.6% is pretty comparable to IBM's profit margin of 8.73% and IBM is a pretty darn good company.
This strikes me as something close to an exit strategy by way of diversification for Sun. Their core server business is seriously erroding and under attack from all sides. This gives them potentially two things. First, a way to provide integrated product lines. Servers and storage are complementary businesses and I could see Sun offering tightly bundled turnkey installations. Second, this gets Sun a profit center to keep them afloat as they transition their business model.
Though it might not be advertised as such, this might be akin to a reverse acquisition since StorageTek is profitable and Sun isn't. It's interesting, though not surprising, that Sun had to pay cash. Their stock isn't worth much these days and no one is going to lend them money with a BB+ credit rating.
Volume deals for corporate customers I can understand, but blatant price discrepancies just because you browse a site differently than another single customer is bad business. I don't know if I would consider it illegal, but it is definitely unethical.
Why? I'm not trying to be trite but I see no ethical dilemma here. What you are talking about economists call price discrimination and it is not only not illegal (in most cases) but I would argue it isn't unethical either. (with appropriate exceptions for things like gender or racial discrimination which are genuinely harmful) If you as a customer are willing to pay a higher asking price without any effort at negotiation or alternate sourcing, where is the ethical dilemma? No one forced you to buy from that vendor. It's not as if you can't get a perfectly adequate computer from someone other than Dell. Small businesses are generally willing to pay a different price than large businesses or home consumers. Why shouldn't Dell charge more to those willing to pay it?
Price discrimination makes many people (us Americans in particular) uncomfortable because we have deeply seated notions of "fairness". If I don't get the same price as you we seem to feel that is somehow unfair. But in reality most prices for goods and services are negotiable and we probably don't have the same williness to pay. If I'm willing to pay more for something than you are, what is unethical about someone selling to me at a higher price? Especially if I'm too lazy to look for a better deal. I'll be honest, I don't really care if an LCD monitor costs me an extra $100 if it does what I want and I can get it when I want it. You may feel differently and that's fine, but it doesn't mean I'm being screwed because I'm willing to pay more for convenience or service or even a brand.
... I had to buy the new laser / keyboard combo because I didn't want two RF adapters on my desk. Can't logitech figure out a better way to deal with this?
They did. It's called Bluetooth. Seriously. Bluetooth the best standardized way to replace wires attached to periferals and Logitech does have a bluetooth mouse and keyboard that are pretty good. You shouldn't have to switch RF adapters again for some time to come.
Problems? There were some configuration problems earlier with Bluetooth due to device manufacturers that did a poor job following the standard. Nokia was particularly bad about this. That has largely (if not completely) been resolved and the most recent versions of WinXP and OS/X have solid support and there is some support in linux too. I'm using bluetooth with my Thinkpad laptop between my cell phone, PDA and mouse and it works great. Nokia used to have a non-standard implementation on my phone (6310i) and I had to get a firmware upgrade for my phone (free under warranty) to make it work. The other devices required no configuration.
I already use Vonage and think VOIP is great. Not quite "Mom-Easy" to setup but otherwise my complaints are few.
That said,I'm still struggling to see the market for these mobile versions. How is a VOIP phone through a WiFi hotspot superior to my GSM cell phone? I've got both VOIP and cell service and I don't see the former replacing the latter for mobile communications. VOIP is cheaper sure, but WAY more limited for mobile communications. Much better suited for office work IMO. Even assuming these new devices work reasonably well, my DSL service gets overwhelmed pretty easily if I'm using Vonage and doing pretty much anything else at the same time. I can easily see two or three of these things being brought into a coffee shop and soaking up all the bandwidth.
Tabbed browsing is irritating because it throws off window management.
I honestly have no idea why you think this. Maybe you have very different browsing habits than I do but I find tabbed browsing makes my life much easier. As others have mentioned, Ctrl-Tab works great for navigating tabs.
Anyway, if you have a few bucks one to spare, one really nice way to navigate tabs is with a Griffin PowerMate. I set up so that twisting to the right sends Ctrl-Tab thus moving through successive tabs to the right and twisting left sends Ctrl-Shift-Tab moving through tabs to the left. Pushing the button closes the tab. (I also have push-twist set up to go forward/backward) This lets me do most browing without ever needing to touch the keyboard and makes navigating tabs very fast. Plus you can use it for other things in different applications. Haven't got it running on my linux box though I understand there are some third party drivers available.
And no I'm not affiliated in any way with Griffin Technologies. Just recommending a product I've found useful.
The article doesn't mention it but I'm assuming the researchers have patents on their process. If that is the case, having a patent is roughly analagous (from a strategic supply standpoint - not an evil business methods standpoint) to owning a mine for about 20 years without actually having to dig up rock. They can still control production and quantity and no one else can produce diamonds without their permission. And it has the advantage of generating a more predictable product. There is some risk that someone might circumvent the process described in the patent in a location which does not respect US patents. They'd have to be careful about exactly what technology they patent and what is kept as a trade secret.
The patent holders could opt for roughly the status quo and just sell into the current system without flooding the market. They could enjoy the artificially high margins that diamonds currently enjoy. If they are interested in the jewlery business, they would have strong incentive to not rock the boat too hard. Diamonds are valuable due to their scarcity (real/artificial) and some smart marketing.
could we be heading into an era where our automobiles will require software updates and fixes to keep them from literally 'crashing'?"
Without putting too fine a point on it, yes! But there is no reason to go all chicken little. Standards of reliability for automotive software are generally much higher than for desktop PC software. No EULAs and auto manufacturers generally can not disclaim warranties. If a car breaks down due to crappy software, Consumer Reports will put out a report and people won't buy it. Additionally there are Lemon Laws and lots of eager lawyers to protect consumers. Unlike PCs where we have been trained to expect crashing software, people don't put up with that in cars, especially since there is the potential for physical harm when hurtling down the road at 80mph.
Firefox has managed to take ~7% of the market in a short period of time from a massively well-funded competitor on an ultra, ultra, ultra shoestring budget.
"Ultra shoestring budget"? Relative to Microsoft sure, but the vast majority of Mozilla development occured with the direct financial support of AOL, Sun and what was left of Netscape after the buyout with numerous other companies contributing. The Mozilla foundation was given millions of dollars to get started. While none of that in any way detracts from how impressive their accomplishment is, I would hardly describe them as working on "an ultra, ultra, ultra shoestring budget."
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It is certainly not as important as civil rights.
Be careful. On many levels this IS a civil rights issue. Think about it. Different people have different opinions but copyright and related issues such as fair use ARE civil rights issues in addition to being economic issues. You can't completely separate them.
Like it or not, copyright law is a fundmental pillar of the modern worldwide economy. Software, media, entertainment, publishing, advertising, retail, and even manufacturing all depend on copyright law to varying degrees to efficiently function. You can make a reasonable arguement that copyright law is the fundamental reason the companies that made the computer and software I'm using on right now are able to exist. There is nothing wrong or immoral with that in principle. Everyone reading this has benefited from copyright law to a meaningful degree. Used properly, copyright law enhances economic prosperity and creates an environment of creativity where the works of others are respected and individuals and society both benefit. Used improperly, copyright law concentrates power in the hands of greedy individuals and corporations, unnecessarily criminalies otherwise sensible behavior, and stifles the creative and economic progress of individuals and society. That sounds a lot like a civil rights issue to me.
Now is this company violating US (and most of the world's) copyright laws? From what I can see absolutely. I have little sympathy for those protecting obsolete/harmful laws for their own profit (i.e. the RIAA) or those who knowingly break the law for their own selfish gain without trying to change the law for the benefit of everyone (i.e. Napster). I'm not intimately familiar with them but if Allomp3.com is fighting for reaonable limits and uses for copyright law then I have no quarrel with them, though I doubt that is the case. More likely they are simply a small firm profiting from the work of others while providing little or no return compensation.
My opinion is that it doesn't much matter which calendar you you. I've tried a bunch of them (Google Calendar, Palm Desktop, Sunbird, Outlook, Lotus Notes, Groupwise, Plaxo, etc...) and the problem isn't typically with a given calendar's capabilities. The problem is that they don't work with each other, especially if you want to use a PDA. Palm Desktop is incompatible with Outlook which is incompatible with Sunbird, etc... Most third party software seems to be written with Outlook/Exchange in mind. iCal is a nice "standard" but it has a minority of marketshare and hence doesn't get enough developer attention. Furthermore, MS isn't about to open up Outlook or Exchange to help matters. Your employer problably uses a different calendar than mine which makes life difficult if you are a consultant or simply have chosen a different calendar for your own use than your company's standard.
I have a Palm Tungsten T3 but it's not very useful because I have to maintain 2-3 incompatible calendars to keep it useful. Import/Export is simply not a solution unless you are changing calendars and dumping the old one. Google Calendar is nice but it doesn't efficiently exchange data with my desktop calendar, work calendar and pda. It's got potential but but we'll see where it goes. Few/none of the calendar makers have shown any inclination to work together so far (customer lock in and all that) so I'm not optimistic.
...Patents are not expensive, patent lawyers are. You can file a patent as an individual for a few hundred dollars...
That's a distinction without a difference. In practical terms, nobody files a patent without consulting a lawyer who specializes in patent law. Why? So the patent will hold up in court and to improve the chances of it getting approved. If it's valuable enough to bother patenting, it's worth consulting a lawywer. If you can't afford a laywer, your patent is effectively worthless anyway because you can't enforce the patent.
I make my living off of eBay. It's a great marketplace but its got its problems. We all know about fradulent sellers. Makes life difficult for folks like us with over 5000 positive feedbacks and a 99.7% rating. But let me clue you, there are probably more fradulent buyers than sellers. Give a credit card # over the phone? Charges (yes legit ones too) will be reversed without a signature. PayPal payment? Just say "not as described" and PayPal will give your money back, almost no questions asked. Only way to be sure of payment is to demand a Money Order but then you lose honest buyers and still get people trying to pass fake Money Orders to you. Sure there are problem sellers but trust me, it's no better and possibly worse on the buyer side.
We deal with this every day. eBay is generally not much help. Oh, they're aware of it but they don't have the resources to fight it all. And eBay's own policies are generally counter productive. eBay caters to the (false) notion that they are "leveling the playing field" by letting the little guy compete. This means they treat a 12 person company like ours the same as a guy in the basement. Well guess what? We're not the same. You combat fraud by having professional companies sell stuff and treating them well, not by assuming all sellers are the same and busting the ones you catch doing something bad. We've sold nearly a million in merchandise in the last few months with highly professional auctions. We've introduced hundreds of people to eBay and often have people call us thinking we *are* eBay! We are exactly the sort of folks eBay should be encouraging but eBay doesn't. We bring in thousands of dollars a week to eBay in fees and we're somehow the same as the guy in his basement with 3 feedbacks? (and before someone asks, no their powerseller program frankly is not much help) eBay has been unwilling to acknowledge that not all sellers are created equal and that size DOES matter. (go ahead make your dirty jokes...)
How's this for absurd... Every account on eBay is a personal account. Companies like Sears (not necessarily them but companies like them) have inquired about using eBay but they can't because they aren't about to use an account tied to a single person. eBay doesn't set security policies that make sense either. shill bidding but their policies don't work when you get large companies with lots of employees. Drop shop franchises regularly get busted for innocent bidding on items. Set up a kiosk to sign people up for eBay? You'll kicked off for shill bidding as soon as they buy something. Of course fraud is a problem but eBay's reponses are just just hastily implemented band aids that don't really stop the problem. The only long term way to fight fraud on eBay is to cultivate companies with real professionalism. If eBay has a weakness it will be a failure to address the needs of real companies trying to use their service. So far they are doing a miserable job of it.
Another problem is that doctors have to be careful to avoid ethical conflicts. Doctors feel they have an obligation to provide the best medical care possible, whatever the cost. It's very easy to let money corrupt how one treats patients. It's laudable and the ethically proper thing to do.
That wasn't phrased quite right. For the record I'm not implying that it's ok to let money corrupt how a doctor treats patients.
However, med school does not teach you Programming/Networking/System Diagnosis and Repair. It appears to have barely taught management.
Let me add to this. I'm about to talk in generalities which often don't apply to particular individuals but which anyone who has spent a lot of time around doctors will probably recognize. I work with doctors often and am married to one. I have the utmost respect for them as people, for what they do and for how hard they work.
Doctors aren't "barely taught management", they aren't taught it *at all* in many cases and certainly not formally. The medical school faculty often has little/no finacial or business experience beyond writing grant proposals so there is no one to learn from. The first time most of them see a balance sheet or a budget is post-residency. Doctors usually learn people management through the experience of a pretty severe hazing process called med-school/residency. In some ways it's understandable since learning medicine is incredibly demanding and it's frankly unreasonable to expect them to pick up a MBA along the way. (though some do...) Oh, there are some feeble efforts to integrate some business training here and there but it's nothing coherent or especially helpful. Ask most residents what contribution margin or EBITDA is and they'll look at you like you've grown horns.
Often a reason many doctors are bad managers is due to personality traits. Many have a bit of a god complex. They're incredibly smart and have typically suceeded at everything they've done their whole life. This isn't entirely bad as patients don't like doctors who seem unsure of themselves. Plus to do some of the things they do (i.e. brain surgery), they have to have confidence coming out their ears. They couldn't survive otherwise. But know-it-all tendancies combined with their lack of knowledge business/engineering knowledge is regularly a bad combination from a management standpoint.
Some specialties (surgery in particular) are known for attracting individuals with excellent technical but poor interpersonal skills. (Sound familiar to anyone here?...) Many do become good managers in time but they learn it through either natural aptitude or through long experience rather than through a curiculum.
Another problem is that doctors have to be careful to avoid ethical conflicts. Doctors feel they have an obligation to provide the best medical care possible, whatever the cost. It's very easy to let money corrupt how one treats patients. It's laudable and the ethically proper thing to do. Of course the obvious problem is that it's impossible to afford to do everything possible for every patient. There simply isn't enough money out there. So instead of trying to do the most for the most, too many do their impression of an ostrich on financial matters and complain loudly whenever anyone tells them "no". Since they are typically in charge, many aren't accustomed to having to justify their actions. It's a difficult situation to be sure but one that deserves more attention than it gets.
From a computer/technical standpoint, most doctors I know only know enough about computers to look up information, write the odd document in word and maybe can use excel or powerpoint. Not that they couldn't learn more, they're certainly smart enough. They just aren't interested and/or don't have the time. Not exactly shocking that they tend to make poor IT managers, especially in light of some of the previous common personality traits I've mentioned.
"All models are wrong; some are useful" -George Box
I'd say it's more like 100% of scientific papers are wrong, it's merely a question of the limitations of the model.
"I don't think the GPL is the principal reason for Linux's success..."
Someone's been hanging around too many honest engineers. This statement grossly underestimates the selfishness of people and corporations as well as the impact of a strong legal system. Look, I'm not saying the GPL is the only important factor but I can't logically see linux existing in anywhere near its current form without it. Even if most individuals would respect other people's work (and that's retardedly naive) some people and most corporations will not. In fact, corporate management has a fiduciary duty to make as much profit as possible for their shareholders and they're under a lot of pressure to do it. There are MUCH easier (and proven) ways to make high margin profits with software than the open source model. Without legal teeth to enforce keeping software in the community it simply wouldn't happen. It's pretty safe to assume that nearly all people and companies act in their short term self interest first and foremost. Always. No exceptions.
I couldn't bear to read the whole thing. Example: ...Certainly a lot of our componentization efforts, and subsequently the tooling to support those componentization efforts, are focused on the core enabling.
I stopped reading after that. Too much consultant speak even if the content is good. And I've been a consultant for years...
An anonymous reader writes ... good to see such explicit acknowledging of the work being done by the open source community.
Good to see people willing to stand up and openly support open source...
Here's my problem with it: it's bad for consumers.
I disagree and so do most economists. True, not everyone gets the same price but that's ok. Consumers don't have a right to buy things at zero markup just because it would benefit them; that would put every company out of business. Nor do consumers have to agree to buy things at a ridiculous markup. A trade is a negotiated agreement. It's up to you and you alone to decide whether something is worth the asking price. You might regret it later but that's your fault for not doing a better job negotiating. Put simply, if the price is agreeable to you by definition that cannot be unfair.
The reason markets work well for consumers is because the market sets the price.
A "market" isn't a concious entity and doesn't make decisions. Markets don't "set" prices. A market is a collective group of individual trades, of which each involved party is ostensibly attempting to maximize his own benefit. If pricing information is transparent you may know what others were willing to pay, but sometimes this information isn't available. For example, how much is a piece of art worth? Hard to say since it is very subjective and what others paid isn't usually known. But ultimately what it is worth is whatever the buyer and seller are willing to agree to.
Even though there isn't time for an individual to research every purchase, they don't have to, becasue so long as a certain percentage of consumers do notice, the price will be competitive.
I think you are trying to explain market liquidity and you may be confusing this idea with the popular but useless notion of a "fair" price. Liquidity has little to do with how much time people are willing to put into trades. Markets are liquid because there are large numbers of buyers and sellers interacting.
As for a "fair" price, you have to think about what fair means. What is fair? If you ask an economist, any time a buyer and seller agree to a price, that is what that good/service is worth at that moment. It is by definition a fair price because both parties voluntarily agreed to it. This has nothing to do with markets per se because markets are just a collection of individual trades.
Price discrimination places the burden of researching every decision on individual consumers.
Why do you think it is someone else's responsibility to decide what something is worth to you? I don't know or care what you think something is worth, and I certainly don't want to be bothered trying to find out. If you are happy with the price someone is asking for a good or service you will pay it. If you aren't you won't. Like it or not, this IS a burden the consumer is supposed to bear. The only one who can decide whether a price is fair is you!
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Please note that in all the above I'm assuming that there are no coersive forces or fraud at work nor a monopoly or monopsony is involved. Some regulation is necessary to keep markets transparent and liquid and in those cases we need third parties (usually government) to keep everything on the up and up.
I know some of you don't like the idea of Tablet PC but I think they are terrific personally. I've always wished that Apple would dump their Newton technology into a Tablet style machine. It would be fantastic for note taking during meetings and would allow me to better edit and distribute my notes. Not to mention the ones with the foldable keyboards are a more flexible form factor for mobile professionals like me. And I'd rather use a Mac than Windows with its underlying unix goodness and sweet interface.
Who knows if we'll ever see it though. It's not clear if there is a big enough market (I think there is but the products aren't good enough yet) and Steve Jobs just doesn't seem fond of the idea. But if anyone could really make it work, I think it would be Apple. Guess I have to keep dreaming...
Yahoo Finance shows Sun as profitable with a P/E of 19 right now...low for a tech company.
So? They aren't very profitable so we shouldn't expect a high P/E. They might be in the black but they only made $18 million in net income last quarter; basically breakeven on $2.8 billion in revenue. And they lost $147 million the previous quarter. P/E ratios can be useful but they are HIGHLY overrated as a means to compare companies. Plus their stock price is in the crapper at $3.76. Perhaps it's a bargin at that price but the market is pretty smart and companies as heavily traded as SUNW don't fall close to penny stock valuations because they are doing well.
Transition its business model to what? Sun has always sold (and resold) storage solutions.
There is a difference between reselling something and focusing on it. IBM used to make most of their money selling hardware. They've always sold services but now they focused on it. Sun has always sold storage but now it will be a MUCH bigger part of their business. Hence their business strategy will have to change.
That's totally different. I am also willing to pay an extra $100 to get a "better" monitor. But the post you replied to talks about paying an extra $100 to get the exact same monitor.
Where did you read anything about a "better" monitor? Not from anything I wrote. I was specificaly writing about paying different prices for the exact same product. That's what price discrimination is. It occurs all the time, everywhere in the world and it is ok. You want a better price? ASK for it. Odds are you'll get it. If they want your business, they'll negotiate with you since a sale, even at a reduced profit is normally better than no sale at all.
Every transaction is a negotiation. Most things we buy are covered under laws like the Uniform Commercial Code which amount to prenegotiated terms. Don't like those terms? You can negotiate with the other party to change them so long as you don't break any laws in the process. We're just so used to ignoring all the terms of sale that we often aren't aware that we've just conducted a negotiation every time we go to the cash register.
I don't know much about finances in large businesses, but is 8.6% profit on sales considered good? Or is it just that in the case of Sun, any profit is good?
Depends on the business. For a manufacturing business a net profit of 8% might be outstanding. For a software business 8% net profit is pretty bad usually. In this case, 8.6% is pretty comparable to IBM's profit margin of 8.73% and IBM is a pretty darn good company.
This strikes me as something close to an exit strategy by way of diversification for Sun. Their core server business is seriously erroding and under attack from all sides. This gives them potentially two things. First, a way to provide integrated product lines. Servers and storage are complementary businesses and I could see Sun offering tightly bundled turnkey installations. Second, this gets Sun a profit center to keep them afloat as they transition their business model.
Though it might not be advertised as such, this might be akin to a reverse acquisition since StorageTek is profitable and Sun isn't. It's interesting, though not surprising, that Sun had to pay cash. Their stock isn't worth much these days and no one is going to lend them money with a BB+ credit rating.
Volume deals for corporate customers I can understand, but blatant price discrepancies just because you browse a site differently than another single customer is bad business. I don't know if I would consider it illegal, but it is definitely unethical.
Why? I'm not trying to be trite but I see no ethical dilemma here. What you are talking about economists call price discrimination and it is not only not illegal (in most cases) but I would argue it isn't unethical either. (with appropriate exceptions for things like gender or racial discrimination which are genuinely harmful) If you as a customer are willing to pay a higher asking price without any effort at negotiation or alternate sourcing, where is the ethical dilemma? No one forced you to buy from that vendor. It's not as if you can't get a perfectly adequate computer from someone other than Dell. Small businesses are generally willing to pay a different price than large businesses or home consumers. Why shouldn't Dell charge more to those willing to pay it?
Price discrimination makes many people (us Americans in particular) uncomfortable because we have deeply seated notions of "fairness". If I don't get the same price as you we seem to feel that is somehow unfair. But in reality most prices for goods and services are negotiable and we probably don't have the same williness to pay. If I'm willing to pay more for something than you are, what is unethical about someone selling to me at a higher price? Especially if I'm too lazy to look for a better deal. I'll be honest, I don't really care if an LCD monitor costs me an extra $100 if it does what I want and I can get it when I want it. You may feel differently and that's fine, but it doesn't mean I'm being screwed because I'm willing to pay more for convenience or service or even a brand.
When certain atoms of uranium are split in a chain reaction, energy is released. This process is called nuclear fission.
Thanks for clearing that up for us...
... I had to buy the new laser / keyboard combo because I didn't want two RF adapters on my desk. Can't logitech figure out a better way to deal with this?
They did. It's called Bluetooth. Seriously. Bluetooth the best standardized way to replace wires attached to periferals and Logitech does have a bluetooth mouse and keyboard that are pretty good. You shouldn't have to switch RF adapters again for some time to come.
Problems? There were some configuration problems earlier with Bluetooth due to device manufacturers that did a poor job following the standard. Nokia was particularly bad about this. That has largely (if not completely) been resolved and the most recent versions of WinXP and OS/X have solid support and there is some support in linux too. I'm using bluetooth with my Thinkpad laptop between my cell phone, PDA and mouse and it works great. Nokia used to have a non-standard implementation on my phone (6310i) and I had to get a firmware upgrade for my phone (free under warranty) to make it work. The other devices required no configuration.
The Times also posted a more detailed explanation (registration required) for their decision.
"We're greedy bastards!"?
I already use Vonage and think VOIP is great. Not quite "Mom-Easy" to setup but otherwise my complaints are few.
That said,I'm still struggling to see the market for these mobile versions. How is a VOIP phone through a WiFi hotspot superior to my GSM cell phone? I've got both VOIP and cell service and I don't see the former replacing the latter for mobile communications. VOIP is cheaper sure, but WAY more limited for mobile communications. Much better suited for office work IMO. Even assuming these new devices work reasonably well, my DSL service gets overwhelmed pretty easily if I'm using Vonage and doing pretty much anything else at the same time. I can easily see two or three of these things being brought into a coffee shop and soaking up all the bandwidth.
Tabbed browsing is irritating because it throws off window management.
I honestly have no idea why you think this. Maybe you have very different browsing habits than I do but I find tabbed browsing makes my life much easier. As others have mentioned, Ctrl-Tab works great for navigating tabs.
Anyway, if you have a few bucks one to spare, one really nice way to navigate tabs is with a Griffin PowerMate. I set up so that twisting to the right sends Ctrl-Tab thus moving through successive tabs to the right and twisting left sends Ctrl-Shift-Tab moving through tabs to the left. Pushing the button closes the tab. (I also have push-twist set up to go forward/backward) This lets me do most browing without ever needing to touch the keyboard and makes navigating tabs very fast. Plus you can use it for other things in different applications. Haven't got it running on my linux box though I understand there are some third party drivers available.
And no I'm not affiliated in any way with Griffin Technologies. Just recommending a product I've found useful.
The article doesn't mention it but I'm assuming the researchers have patents on their process. If that is the case, having a patent is roughly analagous (from a strategic supply standpoint - not an evil business methods standpoint) to owning a mine for about 20 years without actually having to dig up rock. They can still control production and quantity and no one else can produce diamonds without their permission. And it has the advantage of generating a more predictable product. There is some risk that someone might circumvent the process described in the patent in a location which does not respect US patents. They'd have to be careful about exactly what technology they patent and what is kept as a trade secret.
The patent holders could opt for roughly the status quo and just sell into the current system without flooding the market. They could enjoy the artificially high margins that diamonds currently enjoy. If they are interested in the jewlery business, they would have strong incentive to not rock the boat too hard. Diamonds are valuable due to their scarcity (real/artificial) and some smart marketing.
could we be heading into an era where our automobiles will require software updates and fixes to keep them from literally 'crashing'?"
Without putting too fine a point on it, yes! But there is no reason to go all chicken little. Standards of reliability for automotive software are generally much higher than for desktop PC software. No EULAs and auto manufacturers generally can not disclaim warranties. If a car breaks down due to crappy software, Consumer Reports will put out a report and people won't buy it. Additionally there are Lemon Laws and lots of eager lawyers to protect consumers. Unlike PCs where we have been trained to expect crashing software, people don't put up with that in cars, especially since there is the potential for physical harm when hurtling down the road at 80mph.
Firefox has managed to take ~7% of the market in a short period of time from a massively well-funded competitor on an ultra, ultra, ultra shoestring budget.
"Ultra shoestring budget"? Relative to Microsoft sure, but the vast majority of Mozilla development occured with the direct financial support of AOL, Sun and what was left of Netscape after the buyout with numerous other companies contributing. The Mozilla foundation was given millions of dollars to get started. While none of that in any way detracts from how impressive their accomplishment is, I would hardly describe them as working on "an ultra, ultra, ultra shoestring budget."