I realize that the price of these cars will drop as they are mass produced, but by how much? The hybrid cars that they are producing now are based on existing body and drivetrain models and they still demand a premium. These wacky cars have almost nothing in common with current models, which means that mass production of these vehicles will require entirely new factories and the expensive retraining of factory workers. In short, no one is going to be mass producing these babies until the are sure that they will compete with standard internal combustion engines. It isn't going to be enough that their only by-product is water, especially in third world countries like China.
The funniest part of the whole article was the idea that these vehicles might take off in China. Having lived for some time in the third world (five years in South America) I can guarantee that the Chinese aren't going to go for these vehicles unless they are significantly less expensive than internal combustion vehicles. Heck, the best selling car in Peru, to this day, is the Volkswagon Beetle--and I am not talking about the new one, I am talking about the one based on WWII technology. The reason, these cars are easy to fix and require almost no special tools. They also require no fancy parts that need to be imported. More importantly they are inexpensive to purchase. That's the technology that these hyrdogen cars are going to have to compete against if they want to get into the Chinese market, and my guess is that they are going to fail miserably.
The whole fuel issue is nothing more than a red herring really. If these cars were cheaper than normal cars, then Hyrdogen refueling zones would pop up all over. After all, Hyrdogen is pretty easy to produce. A little electricity and some water and you are golden. Of course, that doesn't really solve the environmental problems with cars, since you still end up burning fossil fuels to generate the electricity, but it's almost certainly an improvement over millions of internal combustion engines.
Personally I am very skeptical of GM's whole project. My guess is that they are primarily doing this as a tax incentive and a PR stunt. As the automotive world's top dog they have the smallest incentive to really shake things up. For this sort of a project to really work it needs to be aimed at the low end of the car market, and not the luxury end.
The fact of the matter is that gas really isn't that expensive when compared with the price of a car. This is especially true in countries where it isn't taxed to death. The Chinese couldn't care less about the environment. They are currently lining their streams with our cast off computers for crying out loud. The last thing that they are likely to worry about is car emissions. For them it is going to be all about price, and these hyrdogen cars aren't even in the running.
The real problem isn't the performance. The real problem is that it would cost a quarter of a million dollars to purchase. For that amount of money I can buy Hondas for myself and all five of my prospective passengers and still have enough cash lying around for a good sized house (in my neck of the woods). Oh, and I wouldn't actually be able to refuel the darn thing.
SCO has two proprietary UNIX OSes (UnixWare, and OpenServer) and a Linux distribution, and they have essentially no inhouse development staff. In short, they haven't a prayer of actually competing.
Which is why they are considering this sort of a suicide tactic. They have nothing to lose.
That would be a waste of a perfectly good torpedo.
Caldera is screwed one way or the other. They have almost no developers; they have two legacy OSes to support, UnixWare and OpenServer, and their one entry in the growing Linux market is a watered down clone of SuSE's Linux distribution with a Windows-style pricetag.
Caldera still has SCO's rather large installed base of legacy installations, but they have absolutely no hope for future momentum. Once upon a time SCO used to be able to deride Linux as a toy, but the fact of the matter is that SCO's proprietary UNIXes are the toys now. SCO doesn't even have a plan for porting their proprietary UNIXes to Itanium.
I agree that Linux isn't storming the desktop just yet, but I am quite sure that it will. I have been using Linux since 1995 and it is amazing how much it has improved in that time. There is no question that the Linux desktop is maturing at a much faster rate than Microsoft is "innovating," but that isn't the reason that I am so confident. The fact of the matter is that Micrsoft could still snuff Linux's chance of spreading like the proverbial candle, if they had the will to do so. If Microsoft cut the price of Windows, Office, and their development tools so that they were more competitive price wise with Linux then Linux adoption would dry up overnight. Sure, some folks would still adopt Linux (as it is a far better tool for some uses than the alternatives), but the rate of adoption would slow dramatically.
The reason that Microsoft hasn't done so is that they are far more concerned about their stock price dropping in the short term than they are about Linux. Microsoft is still priced at a premium, and Wall Street still expects rapid growth out of the company. Microsoft is under huge pressure to increase revenues, and they have to do it with a PC market that is on the decline. Microsoft has no choice but to squeeze their customers, and the more they squeeze the more attractive Linux becomes. If they try and combat Linux with aggressive pricing their revenues will drop, and so will their stock price. A rapid drop in stock price would hurt Microsoft's top brass far worse than losing marketshare to Linux (Bill Gates alone has tens of billions of dollars worth of MSFT stock), and so they are taking the road of slow attrition hoping that it the meantime they can find some way to save their business.
In case you are wondering XBox isn't likely to be that savior.
I just know better. On the surface the activists pretend that they are doing what they are doing out of concern for the factory workers, but that simply doesn't stand up to closer scrutiny. Anyone who has ever lived in a third world country can attest to the positive effects that first world investment makes in the local economy.
The people working in Nike's factories have very little to offer employers besides hard work. For the most part they are uneducated and without prospects. The jobs in the Nike factory are, without doubt, the best and brightest hope for their future. If Nike had to pay U.S. wages to these folks then they would be far better off simply building their factory in the U.S.. Here in the U.S. we have a far higher level of education, far more stability, and far better infrastructure.
In fact, that is why wages are so low in these third world countries. With their instability, rampant corruption, and poor infrastructure they have little chance of enticing businesses to spend millions of dollars on new factories. The only thing these countries have to offer is low wages.
That part of the activists story simply doesn't wash, and the ones that organize the whole thing are smart enough to know it.
What the activists really want is to turn American consumers away from goods manufactured outside of the U.S.. They don't want to have to compete with these foreigners. Which is fine, I don't really want to compete with them either:). I just have a problem with their hypocrisy. They aren't the least bit concerned about anything but their own well-being (just like the folks working at Nike).
Uh, software pirates are thieves. In fact, increasingly software pirates have ties to organized crime. For the types of organized software piracy that these people are accused of 5 years is practically a slap on the wrist. Especially once you are done with the plea bargaining and the time off for good behavior. No one is going to end up with 5 years in the big house for "borrowing" a copy of Photoshop.
I suppose when it comes right down to it I don't believe that you have the right to copy someone else's copyrighted works without their permission, and I believe that it is the software pirates' fault that copyright holders are looking to Microsoft and friends to enforce their digital rights. If it weren't for the software pirates I wouldn't have to worry about Palladium.
The activists have an agenda, and the folks at Nike have an agenda. The difference is that the folks at Nike have a rational agenda. The folks at Nike want to make a buck and provide some jobs for folks in a third world country. Under this scenario everyone gets what they want. Nike makes some profits, U.S. consumers get the shoes they want, and the folks in the third world country get desperately needed jobs. And don't tell me that the folks working for Nike aren't grateful for their jobs either. I have lived in several third world countries myself and I have seen the reality of these so-called "sweatshop" jobs.
The activists, in general, have motivations that are just as base, if not more base, than the folks at Nike. Instead of vying for economic power like the folks at Nike they are vying for political power. They use the ignorance of the young dupes they find in the U.S. and in other first world countries to drive themselves into the spotlight and onto the political scene. The difference between the folks at Nike and the activists is that the folks at Nike have created a set of transactions that benefits everyone involved. They make a buck, their workers make a buck, and the customer gets a pair of shoes just like his favorite basketball player (or whatever). No one is forced to do anything against their will, and no one gets hurt.
The activists, on the other hand, can do nothing but destroy. Because of their work Nike, the factory workers, and the customers are all hurt.
Now, this is not to say that sometimes there aren't situations in which people should speak out. Clearly there are abuses of the system, and these need to be brought to the attention of everyone involved. But I don't believe that government should be able to tie Nike's hands behind their back. They should be able to respond to the accusations by the activists. If the activists truly have a case then they can dig up evidence and prove their case in the court of public opinion. Such evidence is news, and these folks would have little trouble getting it printed. Heck, worse comes to worse they could always take the evidence to Reebok or something.
In short, anyone who thinks that there is nothing in it for the activists is not thinking clearly. Political power is every bit the lure that economic power is. The people controlling the activists (and likely paying their wages), have a definite agenda.
Yes, the Movie and Music folks would like to mandate security with government intervention, wacky-doodle encryption schemes, and other such nonsense, but that doesn't mean that those of us fighting to maintain our rights should shed tears for crackers and pirates that get caught and prosecuted.
Personally I think that there is a world of difference between the guy in Norway that wrote DeCSS so that he could view legally purchased DVDs on his Linux box and the masses of folks pirating copyrighted works via KaZaa and the like. I am perfectly willing to pay for content, but I am not willing to give up my fair use rights.
The irony of the situation is that there are publishers, musicians, and probably even movie producers that are willing to meet us halfway. I have bought quite a few ebooks from Baen and Fictionwise that were available in several unencrypted formats, and there are plenty of musicians that are willing to let you download samples of their music for free, and are also happy to produce CDs that will play on your computer.
The real trick is to force the market in the direction you prefer by supporting the efforts of those that respect your fair use rights. People that copy copyrighted material illegaly are simply strengthening the argument of the people that say that government intervention and strong cryptography is required.
Oh, and make sure you vote, and also make sure to check the voting record of your elected officials. You might be surprised.
First the came for the crackers, and I was glad because I use computers to run my business.
Then the came for the pirates, and I was glad for any number of reasons -- mostly because I happen to believe that it is good manners to respect other people's copyrights.
Lumping people excercising their fair use rights with crackers and pirates is pretty poor logic. Nice try though.
My father is a lawyer, so I don't share most people's distate for all things having to do with attorneys. However, adding lawyers to the mix does not do anything except raise prices.
Businesses get what they deserve. As we all know there are plenty of alternatives to Outlook (and even Windows). The market is already taking care of this problem by itself. Customers are starting to take security into account when purchasing software, and even Microsoft is starting to react. If Microsoft doesn't react strongly enough then that's one more bit of ammunition for the systems administrators who are pushing for Linux desktops.
In the end it isn't government intervention that is likely to make our software safe. Beauty Salons would have UV lights and health safety concerns whether they were mandated or not for the simple reason that lice is bad for business. The same is true with software. Microsoft will either clean up their act or customers will try something else.
Two things, the reason that a person would replace $900 worth of quality components with a $200 WalMart computer is that if the $900 computer is over a year old then the WalMart computer is probably faster.
The second thing is that I actually agree with you about the software bit. As long as people are using Windows on their desktops then there will be a need for folks that know how to rescue information from Windows. However, that isn't necessarily going to be the case long term. I recently replaced my home computer running Linux and reconfiguring all of my software was almost as easy as copying over my/home directory. In other words the technology is already available that would make switching machines practically painless, and I am still not convinced that in the long run we aren't going to move towards have something similar to an X Terminal in our homes. Our ISP will maintain our account and our software and we will simply have some sort of a thin client that allows us to connect to servers running our software and saving our information.
In other words, I don't see computer repair being an important occupation 10 years from now.
I agree that this is a major problem. However, I think that (for computers anyway) it is a problem that is likely to be solved in the near term.
Pretty soon computers will become just another appliance. What people will really want out of their home computer is a way to access the Internet. Instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on computers that become obsolete overnight they will instead buy some kind of brainless thin client whatsit that will allow them to access software and information on someone else's server. Instead of maintaining their own machine they will get a computer bill (probably instead of a cable bill and a phone bill) and someone else will do most of the administration.
In today's terms you will have an X Terminal and you will pay to connect to your ISP's servers (where your software and information will reside).
Instead of the constant pressure to upgrade your PC we would be faced with something similar to the much smaller pressure that we currently face to upgrade our television. Sure we still throw away a lot of television sets, and we would still have to update servers, but that will be a much smaller problem then dealing with the ever expanding waste of disposing of the PCs that everyone would have to continualy upgrade. In the future when you want more computing power all you will have to do is call up your ISP and ask for more CPU time (or whatever).
The question is whether government intervention would solve the problem or not. If they are a good size shop chances are good that they will be able to afford to pay for the training necessary to get certified, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they will start taking pride in their work. A smaller shop, or someone that does repair work part time, on the other hand, might decide to simply get out of the business despite the fact that they are actually good at fixing computers.
Not that it matters. Computers no longer cost thousands of dollars to replace. Pretty soon only idiots are going to want their computers repaired. Smart folks will simply have good backups. When something goes wrong they will march down to WalMart and buy a new machine.
Exactly, as soon as computer repair becomes a racket then you will undoubtedly see both unionization and certification.
Basically mandated government certification usually happens not because of public safety. Heck, look at the examples of automotive repair and beauty salons. There are plenty of auto mechanics that are incompetent, and piles more that are plain dishonest. And there are plenty of incompetent beauty school grads as well. That's why when your car is busted or you need a haircut you ask people you trust for a recommendation. Anyone who has ever had a mechanic screw up their car or gotten a bad haircut knows that the certification doesn't really mean anything.
What certification and unionization do accomplish, however, is that they raise the barrier to enter the profession. The folks that already do this type of work would just as soon not have any new competition, so they make it difficult to enter the business. Whether this is good or not depends on your point of view.
Not that it matters in the case of computer repair. Computer repair is a dying business anyhow. When you can purchase a new computer for $200 from walmart.com why would you bother repairing your old machine? In a few years the only people interested in repairing old computers will be the type of people that fix toasters and vacuum cleaners for fun. Adding certification and unionization to the mix will only make computer repair more expensive and accelerate the rush towards replacing instead of repairing.
If you actually read the article you would see how this is good for the developer too. You see, Ethan actually needed something like this for a business he was planning on starting. In other words he was going to write the software anyhow. By releasing the software under the GPL he has been able to A) get other folks to help him, and B) increase his personal reputation (ie. advertising).
There is no way that Ethan could have paid for all of the support that the Nagios community has given in the way of brainstorming ideas, testing, coding, and advertising without freeing his portion of the software. True, he does a disproportionate share of the work, but he gets nearly all of the credit as well.
I also have a hard time feeling sorry for Linus Torvalds. Linus was able to hook a sweet job at a well-funded Silicon Valley startup right out of college. Linus had his pick of jobs. Any number of Linux companies would have happily hired him. You can bet your last dollar that he makes far more than he would have if he had never released Linux, and Linus will probably never have to worry about finding a job.
Free Software is good for programmers, just not the programmers working on competing commercial software.
The funny thing about that is that I just read an article today in the Linux Journal about replacing Exchange with Free Software. Apparently this does require Bynari's non-free Outlook plug-in, but everything works (including server-side calendaring, public folders, the whole smear).
That doesn't even take into account Samsung's new version of HP's OpenMail, or the Exchange replacements available from SCO or SuSE.
Not only are there Linux-compatible, Exchange replacements, but these replacements cost less than Exchange and they require far fewer infrastructure changes. Most Exchange shops are still using version 5.5 because Exchange 2000 requires too many infrastructure changes.
There is now little or no reason for a business to run Windows servers. Linux has low cost replacements for basically everything Microsoft offers on the server side.
Which is why the recipe for saving money on the desktop has much more to do with removing MS Office than with removing Windows.
Putting Linux on everyone's desktop is hard, and since you probably have to purchase Windows anyhow the potential savings are fairly low. Thin clients is the exception to this rule, and it is undoubtedly one of the major reasons that Linux on the desktop is starting to get a bit of a run. The primary reason for using thin clients, however, is to cut down on administration. The lower licensing fee is simply gravy.
Replacing MS Office with StarOffice or OpenOffice, on the other hand, is relatively easy. StarOffice and OpenOffice run on Windows, and chances are good that your documents will transfer over with a minimum of fuss. This way you can continue to use all of your other Windows applications.
The $40 billion in the bank is nothing but a diversion. It's the stock price that matters to the folks running Microsoft. Bill Gates would lose nearly almost $40 billion himself if Microsoft stock dropped to half its current price, and with Microsoft stock still priced for double digit growth that sort of a drop is not entirely out of the question--especially if investors start thinking that Linux is about to start cutting into Microsoft's bread and butter markets.
ESR is merely throwing fuel on the fire. He knows that if he makes enough noise then his piece will make the trade rags.
Linux folks can read eBooks right now. Heck, I have read over 60 of them in the past year alone, and I have a real problem with a program that unencrypts Microsoft's eBooks. The reason for this is simple. The last thing I want to do is increase sales of Microsoft eBooks. Right now the eBook industry is finally coming to the conclusion that encryption doesn't do anything but hurt its profits. There are plenty of places where I can get unencrypted eBooks, and I would just as soon send the publishers the message that the best way to sell their eBooks is to release them in a wide variety of unencrypted formats. If you don't believe me check out Baen, or most books at Fictionwise.
This software is the worst possible reflection on the eBook community. Not only does it make us all seem like thieves, but the pornographic element makes us look like degenerates as well.
Microsoft has always been a nifty development platform. Heck, I believe that is the reason that Windows won out over OS/2. Microsoft courted developers much harder than IBM did.
However, upgrade cycles are going to continue to be a difficult problem for Microsoft. Even if they do get massive uptake of Windows XP and Office XP they still will have several years before they will have something else to sell, and this time they won't be competing with crappy Windows 98, but a very decent Windows XP. Unless Microsoft comes up with something stunning people are going to be even more likely to stay where they are at. The fact of the matter is that the PC industry is past its growth stage, and the software that Microsoft specializes in (OSes and Office suites) are becoming commodities. Say what you want about Linux or OpenOffice, but Microsoft is not going to be able to get away with 85% profit margins for too much longer.
Yes, the difference is that Microsoft is losing money on the XBox, and the more the console sells, the more money they lose.
Microsoft spent too much money on hardware, and the fact that they can't integrate their chipset (since they bought major components from several manufacturers) means that they aren't really ever going to be able to lower the price of their hardware. Just because Microsoft can afford to give away XBoxes at the same price as a PS2 does not mean that this is a smart business practice.
Gaining marketshare is neat, but if you have to lose money doing it then you had better make sure that you are driving your competitor out of business.
I agree with you completely about your Linux server comment. While there obviously are some cases where Linux replaces Windows on the server (I know of some cases first hand:), Linux is primarily damaging to Microsoft because it is keeping UNIX shops from switching to Windows 2000. Marketshare would be great for Microsoft, but their stock price reflects growth and 3% simply isn't going to cut it. Aside from that Linux really limits how much Microsoft can charge for their server OS (which is why their profit margin is so much lower in their Server business unit).
My point was really that Microsoft could not only make their customers happy, but they could bury the threat of Free Software in one fell swoop by simply lowering their prices dramatically. The reason that Linux, OpenOffice and and the rest of Free Software is still a threat to Microsoft is that Microsoft's customers are tired of being treatedly so badly. The reason that Microsoft hasn't done this has nothing to do with protecting its business long term. Instead it has everything to do with protecting Microsoft's stock price for the short term.
Corporate management should focus on the business (profits, revenues, margins, marketshare, etc.), and not on the stock price. As we all know the stock price can have little or nothing to do with the long term viability of the company. When management starts making decisions based on how Wall Street will react (as opposed to how the decision will effect the bottom line), then the company is in serious trouble.
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I realize that the price of these cars will drop as they are mass produced, but by how much? The hybrid cars that they are producing now are based on existing body and drivetrain models and they still demand a premium. These wacky cars have almost nothing in common with current models, which means that mass production of these vehicles will require entirely new factories and the expensive retraining of factory workers. In short, no one is going to be mass producing these babies until the are sure that they will compete with standard internal combustion engines. It isn't going to be enough that their only by-product is water, especially in third world countries like China.
The funniest part of the whole article was the idea that these vehicles might take off in China. Having lived for some time in the third world (five years in South America) I can guarantee that the Chinese aren't going to go for these vehicles unless they are significantly less expensive than internal combustion vehicles. Heck, the best selling car in Peru, to this day, is the Volkswagon Beetle--and I am not talking about the new one, I am talking about the one based on WWII technology. The reason, these cars are easy to fix and require almost no special tools. They also require no fancy parts that need to be imported. More importantly they are inexpensive to purchase. That's the technology that these hyrdogen cars are going to have to compete against if they want to get into the Chinese market, and my guess is that they are going to fail miserably.
The whole fuel issue is nothing more than a red herring really. If these cars were cheaper than normal cars, then Hyrdogen refueling zones would pop up all over. After all, Hyrdogen is pretty easy to produce. A little electricity and some water and you are golden. Of course, that doesn't really solve the environmental problems with cars, since you still end up burning fossil fuels to generate the electricity, but it's almost certainly an improvement over millions of internal combustion engines.
Personally I am very skeptical of GM's whole project. My guess is that they are primarily doing this as a tax incentive and a PR stunt. As the automotive world's top dog they have the smallest incentive to really shake things up. For this sort of a project to really work it needs to be aimed at the low end of the car market, and not the luxury end.
The fact of the matter is that gas really isn't that expensive when compared with the price of a car. This is especially true in countries where it isn't taxed to death. The Chinese couldn't care less about the environment. They are currently lining their streams with our cast off computers for crying out loud. The last thing that they are likely to worry about is car emissions. For them it is going to be all about price, and these hyrdogen cars aren't even in the running.
The real problem isn't the performance. The real problem is that it would cost a quarter of a million dollars to purchase. For that amount of money I can buy Hondas for myself and all five of my prospective passengers and still have enough cash lying around for a good sized house (in my neck of the woods). Oh, and I wouldn't actually be able to refuel the darn thing.
Other than that, this baby is golden.
SCO has two proprietary UNIX OSes (UnixWare, and OpenServer) and a Linux distribution, and they have essentially no inhouse development staff. In short, they haven't a prayer of actually competing.
Which is why they are considering this sort of a suicide tactic. They have nothing to lose.
That would be a waste of a perfectly good torpedo.
Caldera is screwed one way or the other. They have almost no developers; they have two legacy OSes to support, UnixWare and OpenServer, and their one entry in the growing Linux market is a watered down clone of SuSE's Linux distribution with a Windows-style pricetag.
Caldera still has SCO's rather large installed base of legacy installations, but they have absolutely no hope for future momentum. Once upon a time SCO used to be able to deride Linux as a toy, but the fact of the matter is that SCO's proprietary UNIXes are the toys now. SCO doesn't even have a plan for porting their proprietary UNIXes to Itanium.
I agree that Linux isn't storming the desktop just yet, but I am quite sure that it will. I have been using Linux since 1995 and it is amazing how much it has improved in that time. There is no question that the Linux desktop is maturing at a much faster rate than Microsoft is "innovating," but that isn't the reason that I am so confident. The fact of the matter is that Micrsoft could still snuff Linux's chance of spreading like the proverbial candle, if they had the will to do so. If Microsoft cut the price of Windows, Office, and their development tools so that they were more competitive price wise with Linux then Linux adoption would dry up overnight. Sure, some folks would still adopt Linux (as it is a far better tool for some uses than the alternatives), but the rate of adoption would slow dramatically.
The reason that Microsoft hasn't done so is that they are far more concerned about their stock price dropping in the short term than they are about Linux. Microsoft is still priced at a premium, and Wall Street still expects rapid growth out of the company. Microsoft is under huge pressure to increase revenues, and they have to do it with a PC market that is on the decline. Microsoft has no choice but to squeeze their customers, and the more they squeeze the more attractive Linux becomes. If they try and combat Linux with aggressive pricing their revenues will drop, and so will their stock price. A rapid drop in stock price would hurt Microsoft's top brass far worse than losing marketshare to Linux (Bill Gates alone has tens of billions of dollars worth of MSFT stock), and so they are taking the road of slow attrition hoping that it the meantime they can find some way to save their business.
In case you are wondering XBox isn't likely to be that savior.
I just know better. On the surface the activists pretend that they are doing what they are doing out of concern for the factory workers, but that simply doesn't stand up to closer scrutiny. Anyone who has ever lived in a third world country can attest to the positive effects that first world investment makes in the local economy.
The people working in Nike's factories have very little to offer employers besides hard work. For the most part they are uneducated and without prospects. The jobs in the Nike factory are, without doubt, the best and brightest hope for their future. If Nike had to pay U.S. wages to these folks then they would be far better off simply building their factory in the U.S.. Here in the U.S. we have a far higher level of education, far more stability, and far better infrastructure.
In fact, that is why wages are so low in these third world countries. With their instability, rampant corruption, and poor infrastructure they have little chance of enticing businesses to spend millions of dollars on new factories. The only thing these countries have to offer is low wages.
That part of the activists story simply doesn't wash, and the ones that organize the whole thing are smart enough to know it.
What the activists really want is to turn American consumers away from goods manufactured outside of the U.S.. They don't want to have to compete with these foreigners. Which is fine, I don't really want to compete with them either :). I just have a problem with their hypocrisy. They aren't the least bit concerned about anything but their own well-being (just like the folks working at Nike).
Uh, software pirates are thieves. In fact, increasingly software pirates have ties to organized crime. For the types of organized software piracy that these people are accused of 5 years is practically a slap on the wrist. Especially once you are done with the plea bargaining and the time off for good behavior. No one is going to end up with 5 years in the big house for "borrowing" a copy of Photoshop.
I suppose when it comes right down to it I don't believe that you have the right to copy someone else's copyrighted works without their permission, and I believe that it is the software pirates' fault that copyright holders are looking to Microsoft and friends to enforce their digital rights. If it weren't for the software pirates I wouldn't have to worry about Palladium.
The activists have an agenda, and the folks at Nike have an agenda. The difference is that the folks at Nike have a rational agenda. The folks at Nike want to make a buck and provide some jobs for folks in a third world country. Under this scenario everyone gets what they want. Nike makes some profits, U.S. consumers get the shoes they want, and the folks in the third world country get desperately needed jobs. And don't tell me that the folks working for Nike aren't grateful for their jobs either. I have lived in several third world countries myself and I have seen the reality of these so-called "sweatshop" jobs.
The activists, in general, have motivations that are just as base, if not more base, than the folks at Nike. Instead of vying for economic power like the folks at Nike they are vying for political power. They use the ignorance of the young dupes they find in the U.S. and in other first world countries to drive themselves into the spotlight and onto the political scene. The difference between the folks at Nike and the activists is that the folks at Nike have created a set of transactions that benefits everyone involved. They make a buck, their workers make a buck, and the customer gets a pair of shoes just like his favorite basketball player (or whatever). No one is forced to do anything against their will, and no one gets hurt.
The activists, on the other hand, can do nothing but destroy. Because of their work Nike, the factory workers, and the customers are all hurt.
Now, this is not to say that sometimes there aren't situations in which people should speak out. Clearly there are abuses of the system, and these need to be brought to the attention of everyone involved. But I don't believe that government should be able to tie Nike's hands behind their back. They should be able to respond to the accusations by the activists. If the activists truly have a case then they can dig up evidence and prove their case in the court of public opinion. Such evidence is news, and these folks would have little trouble getting it printed. Heck, worse comes to worse they could always take the evidence to Reebok or something.
In short, anyone who thinks that there is nothing in it for the activists is not thinking clearly. Political power is every bit the lure that economic power is. The people controlling the activists (and likely paying their wages), have a definite agenda.
Yes, the Movie and Music folks would like to mandate security with government intervention, wacky-doodle encryption schemes, and other such nonsense, but that doesn't mean that those of us fighting to maintain our rights should shed tears for crackers and pirates that get caught and prosecuted.
Personally I think that there is a world of difference between the guy in Norway that wrote DeCSS so that he could view legally purchased DVDs on his Linux box and the masses of folks pirating copyrighted works via KaZaa and the like. I am perfectly willing to pay for content, but I am not willing to give up my fair use rights.
The irony of the situation is that there are publishers, musicians, and probably even movie producers that are willing to meet us halfway. I have bought quite a few ebooks from Baen and Fictionwise that were available in several unencrypted formats, and there are plenty of musicians that are willing to let you download samples of their music for free, and are also happy to produce CDs that will play on your computer.
The real trick is to force the market in the direction you prefer by supporting the efforts of those that respect your fair use rights. People that copy copyrighted material illegaly are simply strengthening the argument of the people that say that government intervention and strong cryptography is required.
Oh, and make sure you vote, and also make sure to check the voting record of your elected officials. You might be surprised.
Wrong. It is more like.
First the came for the crackers, and I was glad because I use computers to run my business.
Then the came for the pirates, and I was glad for any number of reasons -- mostly because I happen to believe that it is good manners to respect other people's copyrights.
Lumping people excercising their fair use rights with crackers and pirates is pretty poor logic. Nice try though.
My father is a lawyer, so I don't share most people's distate for all things having to do with attorneys. However, adding lawyers to the mix does not do anything except raise prices.
Businesses get what they deserve. As we all know there are plenty of alternatives to Outlook (and even Windows). The market is already taking care of this problem by itself. Customers are starting to take security into account when purchasing software, and even Microsoft is starting to react. If Microsoft doesn't react strongly enough then that's one more bit of ammunition for the systems administrators who are pushing for Linux desktops.
In the end it isn't government intervention that is likely to make our software safe. Beauty Salons would have UV lights and health safety concerns whether they were mandated or not for the simple reason that lice is bad for business. The same is true with software. Microsoft will either clean up their act or customers will try something else.
Two things, the reason that a person would replace $900 worth of quality components with a $200 WalMart computer is that if the $900 computer is over a year old then the WalMart computer is probably faster.
The second thing is that I actually agree with you about the software bit. As long as people are using Windows on their desktops then there will be a need for folks that know how to rescue information from Windows. However, that isn't necessarily going to be the case long term. I recently replaced my home computer running Linux and reconfiguring all of my software was almost as easy as copying over my /home directory. In other words the technology is already available that would make switching machines practically painless, and I am still not convinced that in the long run we aren't going to move towards have something similar to an X Terminal in our homes. Our ISP will maintain our account and our software and we will simply have some sort of a thin client that allows us to connect to servers running our software and saving our information.
In other words, I don't see computer repair being an important occupation 10 years from now.
I agree that this is a major problem. However, I think that (for computers anyway) it is a problem that is likely to be solved in the near term.
Pretty soon computers will become just another appliance. What people will really want out of their home computer is a way to access the Internet. Instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on computers that become obsolete overnight they will instead buy some kind of brainless thin client whatsit that will allow them to access software and information on someone else's server. Instead of maintaining their own machine they will get a computer bill (probably instead of a cable bill and a phone bill) and someone else will do most of the administration.
In today's terms you will have an X Terminal and you will pay to connect to your ISP's servers (where your software and information will reside).
Instead of the constant pressure to upgrade your PC we would be faced with something similar to the much smaller pressure that we currently face to upgrade our television. Sure we still throw away a lot of television sets, and we would still have to update servers, but that will be a much smaller problem then dealing with the ever expanding waste of disposing of the PCs that everyone would have to continualy upgrade. In the future when you want more computing power all you will have to do is call up your ISP and ask for more CPU time (or whatever).
It's just a matter of time.
The question is whether government intervention would solve the problem or not. If they are a good size shop chances are good that they will be able to afford to pay for the training necessary to get certified, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they will start taking pride in their work. A smaller shop, or someone that does repair work part time, on the other hand, might decide to simply get out of the business despite the fact that they are actually good at fixing computers.
Not that it matters. Computers no longer cost thousands of dollars to replace. Pretty soon only idiots are going to want their computers repaired. Smart folks will simply have good backups. When something goes wrong they will march down to WalMart and buy a new machine.
Exactly, as soon as computer repair becomes a racket then you will undoubtedly see both unionization and certification.
Basically mandated government certification usually happens not because of public safety. Heck, look at the examples of automotive repair and beauty salons. There are plenty of auto mechanics that are incompetent, and piles more that are plain dishonest. And there are plenty of incompetent beauty school grads as well. That's why when your car is busted or you need a haircut you ask people you trust for a recommendation. Anyone who has ever had a mechanic screw up their car or gotten a bad haircut knows that the certification doesn't really mean anything.
What certification and unionization do accomplish, however, is that they raise the barrier to enter the profession. The folks that already do this type of work would just as soon not have any new competition, so they make it difficult to enter the business. Whether this is good or not depends on your point of view.
Not that it matters in the case of computer repair. Computer repair is a dying business anyhow. When you can purchase a new computer for $200 from walmart.com why would you bother repairing your old machine? In a few years the only people interested in repairing old computers will be the type of people that fix toasters and vacuum cleaners for fun. Adding certification and unionization to the mix will only make computer repair more expensive and accelerate the rush towards replacing instead of repairing.
If you actually read the article you would see how this is good for the developer too. You see, Ethan actually needed something like this for a business he was planning on starting. In other words he was going to write the software anyhow. By releasing the software under the GPL he has been able to A) get other folks to help him, and B) increase his personal reputation (ie. advertising).
There is no way that Ethan could have paid for all of the support that the Nagios community has given in the way of brainstorming ideas, testing, coding, and advertising without freeing his portion of the software. True, he does a disproportionate share of the work, but he gets nearly all of the credit as well.
I also have a hard time feeling sorry for Linus Torvalds. Linus was able to hook a sweet job at a well-funded Silicon Valley startup right out of college. Linus had his pick of jobs. Any number of Linux companies would have happily hired him. You can bet your last dollar that he makes far more than he would have if he had never released Linux, and Linus will probably never have to worry about finding a job.
Free Software is good for programmers, just not the programmers working on competing commercial software.
The funny thing about that is that I just read an article today in the Linux Journal about replacing Exchange with Free Software. Apparently this does require Bynari's non-free Outlook plug-in, but everything works (including server-side calendaring, public folders, the whole smear).
That doesn't even take into account Samsung's new version of HP's OpenMail, or the Exchange replacements available from SCO or SuSE.
Not only are there Linux-compatible, Exchange replacements, but these replacements cost less than Exchange and they require far fewer infrastructure changes. Most Exchange shops are still using version 5.5 because Exchange 2000 requires too many infrastructure changes.
There is now little or no reason for a business to run Windows servers. Linux has low cost replacements for basically everything Microsoft offers on the server side.
Which is why the recipe for saving money on the desktop has much more to do with removing MS Office than with removing Windows.
Putting Linux on everyone's desktop is hard, and since you probably have to purchase Windows anyhow the potential savings are fairly low. Thin clients is the exception to this rule, and it is undoubtedly one of the major reasons that Linux on the desktop is starting to get a bit of a run. The primary reason for using thin clients, however, is to cut down on administration. The lower licensing fee is simply gravy.
Replacing MS Office with StarOffice or OpenOffice, on the other hand, is relatively easy. StarOffice and OpenOffice run on Windows, and chances are good that your documents will transfer over with a minimum of fuss. This way you can continue to use all of your other Windows applications.
Yes, and Microsoft is doing their level best to make sure that all of these folks buy an XBox instead of gaming on their PC.
The $40 billion in the bank is nothing but a diversion. It's the stock price that matters to the folks running Microsoft. Bill Gates would lose nearly almost $40 billion himself if Microsoft stock dropped to half its current price, and with Microsoft stock still priced for double digit growth that sort of a drop is not entirely out of the question--especially if investors start thinking that Linux is about to start cutting into Microsoft's bread and butter markets.
ESR is merely throwing fuel on the fire. He knows that if he makes enough noise then his piece will make the trade rags.
Linux folks can read eBooks right now. Heck, I have read over 60 of them in the past year alone, and I have a real problem with a program that unencrypts Microsoft's eBooks. The reason for this is simple. The last thing I want to do is increase sales of Microsoft eBooks. Right now the eBook industry is finally coming to the conclusion that encryption doesn't do anything but hurt its profits. There are plenty of places where I can get unencrypted eBooks, and I would just as soon send the publishers the message that the best way to sell their eBooks is to release them in a wide variety of unencrypted formats. If you don't believe me check out Baen, or most books at Fictionwise.
This software is the worst possible reflection on the eBook community. Not only does it make us all seem like thieves, but the pornographic element makes us look like degenerates as well.
Excellent examples, and an excellent discussion. This is precisely why I keep coming back to /.
Microsoft has always been a nifty development platform. Heck, I believe that is the reason that Windows won out over OS/2. Microsoft courted developers much harder than IBM did.
However, upgrade cycles are going to continue to be a difficult problem for Microsoft. Even if they do get massive uptake of Windows XP and Office XP they still will have several years before they will have something else to sell, and this time they won't be competing with crappy Windows 98, but a very decent Windows XP. Unless Microsoft comes up with something stunning people are going to be even more likely to stay where they are at. The fact of the matter is that the PC industry is past its growth stage, and the software that Microsoft specializes in (OSes and Office suites) are becoming commodities. Say what you want about Linux or OpenOffice, but Microsoft is not going to be able to get away with 85% profit margins for too much longer.
Yes, the difference is that Microsoft is losing money on the XBox, and the more the console sells, the more money they lose.
Microsoft spent too much money on hardware, and the fact that they can't integrate their chipset (since they bought major components from several manufacturers) means that they aren't really ever going to be able to lower the price of their hardware. Just because Microsoft can afford to give away XBoxes at the same price as a PS2 does not mean that this is a smart business practice.
Gaining marketshare is neat, but if you have to lose money doing it then you had better make sure that you are driving your competitor out of business.
I agree with you completely about your Linux server comment. While there obviously are some cases where Linux replaces Windows on the server (I know of some cases first hand :), Linux is primarily damaging to Microsoft because it is keeping UNIX shops from switching to Windows 2000. Marketshare would be great for Microsoft, but their stock price reflects growth and 3% simply isn't going to cut it. Aside from that Linux really limits how much Microsoft can charge for their server OS (which is why their profit margin is so much lower in their Server business unit).
My point was really that Microsoft could not only make their customers happy, but they could bury the threat of Free Software in one fell swoop by simply lowering their prices dramatically. The reason that Linux, OpenOffice and and the rest of Free Software is still a threat to Microsoft is that Microsoft's customers are tired of being treatedly so badly. The reason that Microsoft hasn't done this has nothing to do with protecting its business long term. Instead it has everything to do with protecting Microsoft's stock price for the short term.
Corporate management should focus on the business (profits, revenues, margins, marketshare, etc.), and not on the stock price. As we all know the stock price can have little or nothing to do with the long term viability of the company. When management starts making decisions based on how Wall Street will react (as opposed to how the decision will effect the bottom line), then the company is in serious trouble.