Question - what should happen if OSI software supports plugins (note patented software is just a special case of this) and external scripting languages which themselves are not OSI? You cannot insist that they follow the same licensing. Take a look at GE Medical which embeds Tcl/TK within their medical instruments. I doubt whether they will kindly open up their IP.
Also if the software goes kaput (or bought out) for any reason, what should the contrib community code licensing do (considering the legal entity holding the original OSI does not exist). If I was a Gate-2.0 I would conceive of an ingeneous bait and switch tactic where the original stuff was OSI but then deliberately strangle the legal holder and change the terms of the now rootless software as individuals with forks won't have the resources to compete.
ISPs serve a specific role, to provide local access to internet via local access points. IANAL but as such they would be considered under the provisions of common carriers and regulated as such. On the other hand, how many people think AOL-Time-Warner congomerate could be considered a "mere" ISP. The larger you are, the more of a social/politcal/business entity you are considered and as such more/different/wierd rules (cough*MPAA*cough vs private DJ mixer) apply. To say that a corporation having market cap greater than the GNP of many small countries should not be held to the social standards of specific jurisdictions frames an interesting debate.
This raises philosophical questions. Should a community be held to the norms or ethos of its members? If you subscribe to a service controlled under a legal jurisdictions are you unknowingly binding yourself to an external cultural norm? This is like asking if I used the US dollar I am following the American dream (corporate capitalism), the Euro's gentleman's agreement (state capitalism) or the Australian FairGo (social capitalism - though at the moment the only direction it is going is south).
If you think you are immune from group-think then I congratulate you on your strength of mind. Psychologists have discovered than people in general try to "fit-in" wherever possible. Recall the famous experiments (link anyone?) where they monitored strangers entering an elevator but all the other occupants were instructed to face the back, then the lone holdout also faced the back irrespective of whether there was a rational reason to. Thus if AOL knowingly (by turning a blind eye), and had the power to control the practice but did not forbid music exchanges which they know is illegal, is it an (not quite accessory??) to a crime? Note that economic crims (as self-defined by being against the interests of the incumbants:-( ) are not the really the same as personal criminal acts or even civil violations. If computer companies start competing in other spheres, should they not be bound by similar product safety or service conduct rules?
The law may be an ass in many countries but at least the process is (relatively) open and (given enough pockets) available (unlike proprietary code) within democratic societies. Fundamentally corporations should not be immune from the provisions that govern individuals. This should be separated from the commercial issue of whether music distribution as property right has been violated through deliberate inaction or oversight.
Unfortunately in the long run I think things may hinder the smaller companies as the risk of negative knowledge becomes so great that only MNCs can survive. Eiterh that or MNCs become so overbearing in their zeal to avoid anti-trust provisions that users voluntarily join an independent outfit even if it is located in the South Pole.... (specualtive thought... if someone set up an ISP on the moon, ignoring latency issues, would it be governed by any earth based legal commercial code?). Since AOL wants to do business in Germany, it has to obey the law no matter how stupid it is. If the law sucks and companies refuse to operate or provide their goods or services, then it is up to the citizens to change the law. Much like you don't want independent militaries operating in your backyard (OK so the feds want a monopoly on controlled violence), I think people much prefer having corporations under at least some form of restriction even though it may create some anomalies in the short term.
As Peter Drucker, once said, the key to growing any organisation is to understand what it's real business is (not just its job). For example, if you think about it carefully, you'd realise that McDonalds is in the property business (as a means to controlling its burger sub-francises). Similarly as others have noted in previous/. posts, Microsoft is not in the OS space but in IP licensing (beg (share options for microserf-lifestyle), borrow (embrace,extent,extinguish) or bully (buyouts)).
So, if you study Yahoo, what is its business? It was originally a directory (useful when the web was growing rapidly) and people wanted directions or a map of possible destinations. However, by adopting the advertising model, it confused its business with that of home shopping. When people are searching for an item, they subconsiously ignore all information not relevant to the direct needs (one reason why google seems to prosper is due to its simpler interface). However, by adopting an advertiser driven revenue model, Yahoo has the incentive of not-so-subtlely distracting your attention and thus increasing your search costs (time take to discover something of relevance). If people want to browse for ideas, they buy home&gardens magazines or gawk at the lifestyles of rich and famous where ads do have a role in branding in the proto-wish list stage. If they are on the hunt for specific information/bargins, then the home-shopping mentality is not relevant.
So, the advertising revenue model depends on the fact that impressions lead to a sale but if the disconnect between reality and perception (ie near zero correlation between 2 events) is high, then business (who do have to fork out for ad space) will just find that a $ of advertising will go better in another medium than through Yahoo.
One wonders whether other "successful" internet startups have fundamentally flawed business models as well and what financial stress will reveal who's swimming naked when the financial-hype receeds.
LL
ObJoke... why is TV considered a medium?
Because it's neither rare nor well-done.
Too many chiefs and not enough indians
on
The Hacker Ethic
·
· Score: 2
No criticism but from observation, clusters of hackers (is this the right collective noun?) tend to exhibit the prima-donna effect (partly a reflection of scratching their own itch) which means a lot of the grunge work just doesn't get done. The classic case is many are willing to code but few to document. This can be overcome to some extent by the value of the project, if it is something big/important/significant enough then perhaps people are willing to subordinate themselves to the larger task (how do you think cathedrals got built?.. certainly not by the atheists). Perhaps a more mundane explanation is that the hacker ethic is the social reaction to overcoming stupid/boring/dilbertian tasks set by management. Reality of life - you get paid for doing stuff which you don't like... if it was fun then Gates-2.0 would figure out a way to tax people for the "leisure" of coding.
Socioloists have noted that we invent (boosterism?) myths to explain or expound our tasks (and thus importance) to the outside world (e.g. Hollywood showbiz "glamour" when they are in the business of selling lies). Other scientific studies have tried to work out personal characteristics that explain why we work in particular sectors. For example, psychologists have noted that farmers tend to fall into only a limited subset of personality types (primarily stoic/ plematic) which may be a reflection of the mental toughness or indifference necessary to survive against the forces of Mother Nature (fire/famine/flood). Similarly the hacker ethic may be a self-protective device to glamorise what to others (e.g. marketeers) is a very mind-numbing attention-picking type of work and thus maintain its pool of suck... errr... recruits:-) via the call-against-oppression meme (see google on Windows by day, Linux by night). While the popular stereotype (cough*Napster*cough) of rebelling against the forces of evil (aka corporatisation) may appeal to a teenager's sense of drama, it is hard to sustain in the long term as hackerdom becomes mainstream and thus part of the establishment (e.g. witness SourceForge).
Fundamentally IMHO the hacker lacks professional self-reinforcing core/formal ethics such as the medical Hippocratic Oath or the lawyer's client-attorney priviledge. Short-term thinking is no substitute for building an ethos (system of customs and habits) that encourages creative critical thought. The project mentality harkens to the bunker/war-room type psychological stress and it has been noted (from a economic PoV) that it is very effective (if you ignore social side-effects like lack of a life). In fact the very sense of elitism and techno-jargon is probably driving away the better half of the population. Unless the appeal is to both genders, hackerdom is missing half the talent pool. The hacker work ethic may be a necessary survival mechanism in this type of work (continuous creative combinations of techniques to find the rare killer-app) but the major problem is that it (currently) is difficult to scale beyond a cottage industry or bazaar type collective.
Fortunately the world is big enough for all types and if someone who has been ostracised by mainstream society finds a fit within the hacker culture, then all to the better.
OK, your observations are spot on and the Austrian economists are quite vociferous in blaming the government for mismanaging the money supply (probably a good example of bad agency with near-zero feedback). The point is somewhat subtle and highly political but the essense is that ultimately a currency has to be tied to some benchmark so that people can have a consistent framework for evaluating prices and making economic decisions. The gold standard worked IMHO because it was a proxy for the cost of energy which tracked technological productivity through the ages as it shifted through human muscle, domestication of animals, steam engine mining, petrochemical extraction (TNT blasting -> modern extractive techniques). Productivity (leisure theory of money, etc) is what drives the creation of wealth. Societies like Columbian Spain and Dynastic China got royally screwed when they imported monetary assets (Inca gold, Opium Silver) without any real intrinsic increase in productivity (and you could probably add the current IT overhang to the list after future historicans study this decade). However, for political reasons gold was not a good political choice as the ultimate national backing as the major sources of gold production is South Africa and Russia. So whether you were left-wing or right wing, half of your currency was "unreliable" as those governments could influence production.
Shifting to a fiat form of currency has caused incredible disruptions, there's no doubt that the abandonment of the bond between industrial productivity and social cohesion has caused incredible stress (witness the failure of the lower class unskilled manual labor esp blacks to gain social mobility). As the result the "market" or collective desire for society to have social stability is currently seeking another anchor. In effect, this has implicity recognised (or encouraged the shift to) recognising that information is the key economic driver rather than energy. When we apply our mental talents to unlocking energy sources in nuclear rather than chemical levels, manipulating light rather than electronics, or the quantum world of micro/nanostructures, the the use of a gold standard becomes a hinderance. The failure of the accounting system is that it cannot measure human capital, the intellectual and innovative drive of individuals to create a better life. In fact, if you look closely, you'd probably find that the very measures that governments suggest (e.g. recent Australia attempt to fund "Innovation" is just as likely to succed as Singapore's 5-year plan to establish "creative arts") are counterproductive as the taxes (or forced savings) crowd out private investments or creative activities. With the (admittedly somewhat haphazardous) deregulation of the financial markets, individuals can create their own securities (witness the spontaneous formation of the RueoDollar market despite the best wishes of the NY/Wash financial-politcal complex). As a result, the private venture capital industry, from sheer defensive need to protect their capital formation from tax erosion and reserve bank inflation have evolved techniques and mechanisms to survive in a highly variable and changing environment. As more groups enter the Internet, these third parties will slowly be recognised in their own right as an independent fiscal authority (which is indirectly threatening to certain national sovereignty). If you like I can email you some links on this.
Again as the above this is just my own imperfect understanding as to some of the structural elements of the world economic systems. As a layperson and not a trained economists, I cannot back up my observations with equations or mathematical formulations but if my observations of behaviour and fitting in of reported "facts" fit my mental model of the world, then it is all I can go on. The gold standard has its use and is still a useful proxy for energy, especially in highly developed courtries like Australia/Canada where it is a reflection of the current tech in energy extraction (uses many of the same extractive processes) but IMHO, the case can be made thatthe source of economic power has shifted decisively towards information (+ higher derivations) and is reflected in new instruments such as social policy bonds, environmental indicators (emerging markets for fresh water), etc...
If you follow the Austrian School of Economics (yes, there are competing schools of thought e.g. Chicago School of Rational Economists, etc), then you realise that capital is a heterogeneous structure of productive elements. People tend to confuse the accounting unit (monetary value) with the tangible/untangible asset (essentially a service generating a revenue stream). Why has the West succeeded as compared with the East? There are a lot of competing claims but I will offer a few generic observations:
- alienation - or the separation (and resulting specialisation) of powers. The modern corporation essentially has 3 functional components - owners (shareholders), governance (directors) and operators (managers). Through legal mechanisms, the transfer of powers and associated trust allows more complex structures to be established. Due to historical baggage of feudal governance structures and patron-style relationships, the East has yet to develop a culture which separates the State from the individual biases. Even if you look at places like Singapore, it is essentially a city state driven by a family core (think Italty) and as a result some financiers are rather disparanging of the capital utilisation rate (compare growth in TFP against other states after discounting human and capital mobility). The alienation eliminates (at at least checks to a large extent) influences such as religion, tribalism, etc from economic factors. The downside is that the government is less powerful than many people think.
- agency costs - consequent to this is how do you ensure that the remote agents (managers/financial brokers) work for your aims (wealth creation) rather than pissing off to South America with your loaned capital. Again the rise of a professional management class as distrinct from a family owned firm with a tendency to treat OPM (other people's money) as personal disposable income allows larger scaling of enterprises. This has been aided by the significant reduction in the cost of internal communications due to technology and now you have firms which number employees in the hundreds of htousands (as compared with 100-1000's early last century). Scale matters and family firms don't have guarentee of talent.
- universal education and democratisation of capital - one of the biggest hinderances towards an efficient market is information asymmetry. What you don't know *WILL* hurt you when it comes to insider information, scams, and other forms of white collar crime. By giving the middle class the chance to pool funds into mutual investments, and the transparency to assess companies in their own right, a more accurate picture of the economy can be reflected in the prices that people are willing to lend at. If you take a look at the share-market in say China/HK, if you are not a professional market specialist, you might as well be gambling at your local casino as minority shareholders get screwed big-time.
- credit creation - the unbundling of the currency from any tangible asset such as the gold standard. This is a rather contentious fiscal "innovation" as it creates inflation (e.g. 70's) but the upside is that greater individual risks can be undertaken (with resulting higher returns). There are some serious side effects (financial crisis/flutuating financial securities) but the industry has developed more advanced liquidation techniques to reallocate capital as a result. As a result, the US financial markets have been more efficient at directing capital to product uses (c.f Japan industry boondoggles) despite its current lower (negative?) savings rate.
I'm sure any professional accountants and economists will harp on about a number of other factors such as anti-trust law (one advantage over Europe), intangible property rights (branding, etc) or derivatives to transfer/concentrate risks but IMHO the above are the main structural elements. This is not to say that all is milk and honey, governments, corporations and individuals have been known to screw up but at least the system has a chance to self-correct. However, it should be noted that people in other countries are not stupid and they can read the books on financial as well as any other capitalist. It also discounts certain elements such as social capital whcih is prized much more highly in the East due to higher population concentrations. The other potential problem I see is institutional arrogance... just becaus you are successful now doesn't mean you will always be right. Deeming couldn't convince the American manufacturing industry to take his ideas seriously and as a result the Japanese have now supassed the US in that sector. Given the huge population mass and desire of normal people to improve their lot, there's no reason why India couldn't overtake the US in software services or the Chinese in Engineering Knowledge. In short, the future is unpredictable but a rising tide raises all boats.
The OpenSource community has adapted in various ways to address the issue of coexistance. To use a rather crude analogy, BSD is bisexual whereas kits (see VTK where patented stuff can be compiled out or purcahsed separate) is like having a mistress (or 5). Embedded manufacturers are homosexual in that they enjoy all the priviledges of the CCC toolchain but reserve the right to go the otherway at the last instance. Is there a happy marriage which represents a middle ground? RMS would clearly like the code to be virgin but unfortunately his philosophy of choice does not jib well with a command and control mentality (which if you understand military hierachies is inevitable). While there is some comfort that in the long-term the market/community will evolve solutions, your situation needs to be resolved in the short term. Some suggestions for negotiations:
- suggest to the military-industry perplex (contraction of person and complex) that the GPL form the demo/training version which will reduce the cost of controlling sensitive/unstable components.
- reduce to core + open when only the core is restricted. This reduces the support costs of the ancilliary parts which in a larger OpenSource world there are alternatie suppliers of programmers/expertise.
- emphasise the reduced maintainence costs (OK rather difficult in a government bureacracy which has little concept of fiscal discipline) as you will benefit from the reduction of bit-rot and early obsolescence.
- encourage the development of policies which progressively open up closed source due to the risk of a key personnel leaving. The military understand the value of redundacy (at least if they expect combat casualties) and you want to reduce the risk that a crazed terrorist might decide to nuke the dev-team (OK outlandish but this is the paranoia state) and cripple the critical nexus. OpenSource (GPL) distributes the expertise so the risk of system catastrophe is much less.
- try to understand the client's mindset and address their concerns. GPL/OpenSource is not a universal antidote to world poverty, there are situations where it may not be relevant. If the worry is support/responsibility, suggest mechanisms such as a trouble-ticket. Establish the criteria for it not being GPL (and avoid the generic bullshit about national interests and spy vs spy). Most code is for mundane purposes like logistics and task-automation. Suggesting that tax-payer subsidies of $xxx * 500% per line-of-code will not go down well with politicans.
- read stuff from HOW2-advocacy-Linux to understand how a consultant should think. Your primary concern should be to best meet the needs of the mission. For techniques on critical thinking, read up suff on 6 Thinking Hats to get logical rationals (pos,neg) and reduced bias as to the selection of the licensing/distribution/usage. And for gods sake document it so the next perplex doesn't come along and changes the rules of the game (yet again).
- understand the long-term impact of licensing by using market examples... the Sun Community License as a defensive chastity belt (once you get in you can't check out), university (MIT/CalRegent) condom is disclaim any warrenties, the tactical role of Apple's dildo to try and screw the media control plans of the opposition, However I would suggest using more... ummmm... reserved language.
In short, rather than covering your butt, be prepared to stand up for what you believe is the best for your users in gaining access to software that doesn't suck. Sure you make get knocked about a bit in the early stages but at least you won't be screwed for life by being forced to use software that everyone hates.
Come on... anyone who confuses paper wealth with *real* (tm) wealth deserves whatever sucker trap Wall Street is bound to come up with next. Wealth in its simplest form is the means to produce a future revenue stream and capital (in its broadest sense) a mechanism to shift it through time and space (and into their pockets if certain greedy indidivuals have half a chance). From an personal point of view, the best investment of your time/effort/talent is gaining education/experience. Now those who are less fortunate (ie can't tell the difference between gambling and investing), the financial wizards (for a generous 33% cut of the salami) has kindly offered their services to borrow (banks) or invest (mutual funds) on your behalf. Now after paying for their Lear Jet and CEO-hobbling exercise at Davos, they decide to chuck a few bob at pieces of paper which hypothetically represent ownership of a business system (and any profits/losses - epsecially losses as they capture all the real upside before it gets to the public - thereof) but just to hedge their bets, insist on laws/market mechanisms that prevent others from doing the same thing ie issuing paper (the Fed) or entering the same business (investment financial engineering aka anticompetitive mechanisms). So long as you pick something that privatise gains and socialise losses, you'll be fine (again also assuming that you are comfortable with amorality).
Given that a skilled programmer can easily earn (note for idiots... earn does not mean save) more than a million over their career lifetime, I hope fortune smiles on you and if you are ever in a position to discover the opportunity, you gain the talent to know how to spend your wealth wisely, rather than becoming an economic slave to other people's desires.
If you look at the licenses, then end result is that they encourage different business models. The MS EULA assumes a manufacturing model - pay per widget whether devtool or.bet components. In this situation, they wish to control their IP (building blocks) so that all higher stage developments go through them so they can get an early peek and if necessary buy-out high growth sectors). Read ESR's notes on the difference between end-use and intermediate-use.
The GPL on the other hand assumes that code is communications and the license aims to ensure integrity (purity) and persistence (viral nature). Given that the distribution is unrestricted, then IMHO the model shifts the value to the service model (support, mentoring, accessories, etc). Unfortunately, the margins in this area are slim as it is labor-knowledge intensive and a firm cannot forbid an employee from walking out the door (not until they reintroduce economic slavery a la corporate towns). So you can kiss you 50% gross margins and shareholder stock pyramid goodbye.
The problem comes with the embedded model is that they exist in the gray area between manufacturing and service. IMHO, the problem can be resolved through thinking more carefully about the issue. For example, if you're doing embedded sytems, you might think about distribution of firmware updates as your service model or transmeta code optimisation as a value-added service. All you need to do is to OpenSource something like FCode, intgrate it with Linux as a kernel loadable module, and establish a long-term service contract with customers that purchase your hardware.
Whether this produces superior software is a separate issue. One can argue that something the size of a fortune500 company is too large to be responsive to customers (cf bug tracking/resolution record) and the lack of feedback (which if you assume that code is communications is a valid analogy) creates software that sucks. There are models which combine both Open/Closed source... see VTK which offers the basic toolkit free, then sells application kits and linkages to other systems.
If you look at it objectively, Microsoft is *NOT* a software or innovation company, it is in the business of IP licensing (buy, borrow or bully:-)) and the GPL is a fundamental threat to this model as it does not fit the fules of the game they are trying to impose on the market. Currently OpenSource is a niche segment (low-end servers, embedded, exotic hardware) but given the fact that the PC market is saturated and the internet plays to Linux strengths (many small penguista experimenting with services), then it makes sense to do a slash and burn to clear the path for the 800-pound gorilla.
As a defensive tactic, the GPL acts as a poison pill, as there is no point in being taken-over if you cannot embrace, extend and extinguish a competiting standard. It does even the field for new entrants which as any good self-respecting monopolist tells you is anathema to their excess profits. However, the big big disantage of having a purely free (as in beer) software is that you are missing the market signals that indicate the demand for a particular service. RMS may have his heart and soul in the right place but some of the practical issues need a lot more careful thought.
Let me repeat... there is *NO* global energy (shortage) crisis. What we have is various energy conversion systems (coal/gas/nuclear) with varying costs-ratios. The real problem is regulatory which impacts on two areas outside technical control - distribution and financing. Because of the combination of EPA and certain elements of the environmental movement, it's proven very hard to get energy sources near population centres (combination of NIMBY and powerlines debate) which means fewer high volume / low cost energy sources. Given that the total transmission loss factor can be up to 50% for ~1000km (could an energy expert here give more precise figures?) it simply becomes uneconomic past a certain point. The other consideration is that energy infrastructure has a very long time-scale. When you're thinking of chucking in >$3B for a gas train (those thingys for liquifying natural gas) then you need stable financial environment to do long-term infrastructure investments. Now it may be a matter of perspective but the decadal fluctuations of the dollar-yen-euro (look up Plaza Accord and related history) and sustained deflation (check price of gold which uses roughly similar tech) has driven the cost of oil down to ~$10 which meant zero invementment in exploration and related capital investment which has now caught up to everyone. The Wall Street currency derivatives guys can play silly buggers as far as I am concerned (after all they're only betting against clueless tax-payer funded (central) banks around the world) but for a rational energy company, having someone change the accounting yardstick like a yo-yo on steroids is not conductive to determining the real demand signals the market is trying to give. Despite wishful thinking, wind/wave/solar do not deliveryed the concentrated Watt/hours at an economic price (baring government subsidies) that the average consumer desires unless you are concerned with isolation and reliability issues (e.g. remote telephones).
As for the wheelman or other scooter type derivatices, technology can improve the beast if the free market is left to work and it establishes a niche somewhere. From the shown characteristics (apart from the cute chick factor), it might be useful in natural semi-built areas where trailbikes or cycles would be too bulky or environmentally disruptive. The only challenge is achieving the right power-weight/volume ratio (remember portable). I see some interesting advances that might help - mechtronics (combo of electronics imbedded into the mechanics) will help eliminate dead weight of tramission systems, orbital/radial motors to reduce bulk, distributed intelligence which allows smarts to be in the hand control and the physical parts to drive towards bulk commodities. If I was an investor, it would be a viable proposition depending on the target market segment. Just because California screwed up the deregulation doesn't mean the rest of the world is short or a clue (although given the average idiocy observed in governments I'll reserve judgement).
I would question whether the kacker mentality is healthy in the long-run. Part of the problem is the relative newness of the "mainstream" or massification of computing technology. This naturally attracts early adopters with spare time (ie the pre-teen - professional student) segment which has a natural work approach quite disctinct from the baby-boomers. This can also be seen in places like Japan which is rebelling against the concept of corporate worker drones or samauria salarymen for life. Hwoever is this really the attitude you want to project? Given the sheer mind-numbing tedium of pouring through magalines of code, it is only natural that our mental defenses turn it into a game (in-line jokes, clever credits, etc) otherwise we'd go bonkers having no life. The question is whether this is the "professional" image one wants to retain?
If IT is to gain the natural prestige and social statues of other professions (ie not hacker but software engineering) then perhaps some careful though needs to be applied into thinking of a core concept around which you perpetuate teh good points. The medicals have the Hippocratic Oath, the lawyers have the client-attorney privilege. researchers the scientific method (repeatable evidence of theory), what has kackers got? What social/moral/ethical force is there to encourage quality code, open disclosure (e.g. witness Engineering responsibilty of professional negligence), and fair treatment of the suers and fellow hackers?
Perhaps someone should consider formulating a Code of the Hacker (CotH) like....
#1 When in doubt, read and grok the code
#2 Honor thy source and those who have coded before thee
#3 Thou shalt not delete or corrupt data needlessly
#4 Avoid contaminating your only backup
#5 Covet not thy fellow hacker's interface or API
Perhaps the hacker mentality of caffeine-driven code-fests is a little dated (and expecially not appeal to the female-gender) and might need some seasoning to balance the serious professional aspects and the zen-like fun aspects as well.
I thought that the copyright/publishing industry was governed by the doctrine of first sale? That once a customer purchases a book/video/whatever that they are then free to do whatever they want with it (including resell it) provided they don't breach copyright? The movie industry has adapted by staging releases of block-busters first through cinimas, then video sales, then TV reruns, then cable, then free-to-air. By staggering the release dates they progressively market to segments with smaller disposable income (which is probably why TiVo scares them). Now this works with movies because the upfront capital costs is high but with books it is almost the reverse direction. It is much easier to write a short-story/novel/fan-fiction than it is to produce a film (though with professional cams and software nowdays you can do a half-decent job). IMHO this creates a surplus of low-quality reading material (steoretypical pulp-paperback) which depresses the overall market (why do you think formula-plots are so popular with publishers?, boy-meets-girl,etc...). Now libraries serve a useful purpose in that they tend to concentrate topics of a particular interest. Whetehr university research, corporate technical reference, or children magnet, they serve a social purpose quite distinct from Amazon which is essentially a catalog service. Perhaps a cluebat is in order in that business apply some critical think (yeah MBA and thinking don't seem to mix well) and really understand the role of libraries/collections and stop treating everyone as a single business model. This might actually force them to *gasp* work for their cushy executive perks instead of brow-beating the techs and firing the editorial-grunts to put the fear o god into them. I suspect that the concept of libraries / archives is going to be radically differnet as museums/galleries/science centres muscle in onto the multimedia scene and start competting for attention with books.
Well, fellow Kiwi (if you are really in NZ and not ISPofConvenience), some minor adjustments...
3) Not strictly speaking relavent... this is to state the point that the concept of "fairness" is dependent on your ethical framework, what some people consider "fair" can be in fact shown to be arbitrary and ego-based. Offending the beliefs of sub-groups (e.g. using the Islamic Koran as advertising is a boo-boo found out by one fast-food chain which replicated the flag of one Arabic country) may not make economic sense but when you're dealing in a non mono-cultural environment can be a cause of long-term resentment (e.g. witness the Waitangi Treaty where the concept of sovereignty has slightly different meanings in the Maori and English version).
Taxation... the problem is that once business activities become offshore, then it is possible to continually shift resources out of the grasp of tax scrutiny. Even if you consider taxes a necessary business cost and any investment should be considered in terms of net after tax, given compound interest and taxes as a dissipating force, for some corporations it makes sense (especially if activities are easily relocatable) to have a rolling investment in the latest country to offer tax-holidays. Now you may consider this to be a net transfer of wealth from developing countries citizens to gain the dubious prestrige or bragging rights of hosting "hi-tech" MNCs but given today's sophisticated financial/legal complex designed specifically to shift the burden onto ordinary citizens who can't escape PAYE or GST, you can see that the tax base is shifted disproportinately onto individuals that can't benefit from trusts or options. Take a look at News Corp. Analysis have noted that because it uses accounting discrepencies in Australia (as vs US peers) it gains some marginal advantages which is reflected in a somewhat stronger stock price which is then used as over-inflated script for Mergers and Acqusitions. There are a number of tricks that global corporations can use to minimise tax burdens that are not available to the average person (foreign controlled entities, bermuda IP havans, singaporean cap-gains free holdings, Tongean trusts, cascading losses crystalised at high-tax juristictions, etc). In summary, becauses taxes are tied to a geographical location (despite the ferverant enactments of US tax-citizenship and European tax borders) there will always be countries that can see benefits in providing off-shore "financial" services (cough*BVI*cough). Of course first-world governments are not immune as they find out with sophsicated financial engineering, any subsidy can be trasmitted offshore In summary economic "efficiecy" may come at a social cost (export of pollution/wastes/risks) to third world countries that may rebound in the future when those countries respond by emigrating. Certain not-so-hidden objectives in the US and Europe in promoting globalism is the hope that by improving the financial state of unstable developing countries, they avoid the political necessity (cough CNN effect*cough) of sending their troops on unnecessary pacification exercises, not to mention keeping the wogs out of their middle-class comfort zone (cough*Australia*cough).
So in summary, though the theory is nice, the details need serious attention to ensure that social responsibility is also globalsed as well as economic benefits.
Comes down to your definition of "fair". There are a number of historically compounding events
1) special interests find it a lot easier to band together and lobby for privileges or corporate handouts/franchises (cough*Bono Act*cough) where the benefits are privatised but the costs are socialised
2) many states don't have a open/free capital market and bureacratic misallocation of resources can often lead to perceived dumping and lost opportunities
3) you are hitting many social gaps in beliefs and what is considered "property". For example, some people would consider that AT&T "stole" their logo from a Budhhist motif and claims of biopiracy have created resentment of pharmaceutical companies. You also enter some very subtle issues here (e.g.fencing of the intellectual commons in the genome map, appropriation of tribal marks e.g. tattoos for commercial PR gain)
4) a perception that the biggest sets the rules to suit themselves (you can guess who the instigators of the intellectual rights portion of WTO was) which causes a lot of resentment and ill-will (not to mention being prey on by more sophisticated financial manipulations). You try explaining pump and dump tactics on societies which don't really understand what a stock exchange is really for (hint... not a gambling mecca).
5) socio-economic discontinuities as the lossening of bonds betweeo corporates and workers lead to social stress... there is a hidden cost in overworking your people so much that they quit and change careers, not to mention disruption of family life when relocating. People who are fearful and resentful cannot reason as well as politicians in cushy jobs.
In short, the benefits are nebulous (although historically proven) and the downside is up-front, especially to marginalised unskilled labor who are suddenly faced with a couple of billion competitors. Traditionally governments have attempted to address this with the taxes of any increased economic activity to help disadvantaged groups but with globalisation, you can shift production base to exploit tax policy differentials (cough*transfer pricing + vertical integration*cough). In short, the traditional tools for balancing / redistributing social costs are inadequate in a multi-juristictional environment.
"Fairness" requires a common framework of values and ethics and the Western-centric notions of rational economism and property exclusion/rivalry don't always go down well.
If a company wishes to encourage certain behaviour which is beneficial to its business activities, there are a number of things they can do (including non-monetary rewards). Take a look at how some of the more innovative companies operate and feel free to toss in your ideas.
- (Wall Street bonus pool) announce that a certain percentage of sales will go into a bonus pool which would be divied up to customers (and internal staff) that contributed good suggestions (sorta the hi-tech equivalent of cereal prize-draws)
- (philosopher in residence/patronage) announce that the best person has been selected to serve as some honorary role in independent committee/oversight e.g. Stallman or Bruce Perens
- (MLM) offer freebies like tickets to a MICE (meeting/incentive/convention/exhibition) the company sponsors or open tour of their labs to meet the principles. Good for identifying good techies with potential on reducing recruitment costs (see those OpenSource projects can come in useful afterall)
- (SGI) offer to sponsor OpenSource projects that puts the client in charge. If motivating geeks is akin to herding cats, the smart money goes to whoever provides the best catnip.
- offer to fund downstream activities or co-marketing strategies (e.g. VTK and add-on modules) or even provide small research funds to help them along. This requires some degree of trust which may not always be available in PHB managers.
- include their names prominently in internal newsletters or external reports (peer recognition). This is based on the observation that in today's celebrity driven world, fame is harder to achieve than money.
It should be noted that many OpenSource projects are merely concentrations of dedicated users. Enlightened alpha-architects (e.g. Perl community) that aim to empower the end-user create a win-win situation for everyone provided they don't attempt to be greedy and screw the staff/users over because the prime users are just as clueful (if not smarter) than the original programmers.
Any system has flaws, the best ones tend to recognise it and provide for alternatives and outlets. Many of the problems described (information monopoly) exist because the law/structures passed were intended for a less sophisticated age (e.g. patent laws for when the US was entering an industrialised phase). The fact that we've advanced to the stage where there's a surplus of ideas means that we need to apply other checks/balances to maintain an equilibrium (e.g. anti-competitive laws overrides patent law). However, to point out the excesses exclusively without pointing out the benefits seems to be a little unfair. Without constant regeneration, even ideas and professional qualifications are effected by bit rot. That is why organisations/institutions wrre formed to persist ideas/property rights beyond any individual lifespan.
Some of the thoughts are worth investigating IMHO. The concept of property laws come about because it was more efficient to separate beneficial ownership from control from operation (e.g. reflected in maritime law which followed owner-master-captain chain of authority/delegation). Intellectual property rights are merely a codification of the business practices that exist at the time (e.g. copyright with publishing). In practice the system generally works as the division of labor leads to specialisation and a much more professional conduct (e.g. many publishers will only work through an agent on the assumption that the quality/schedule is at least above a certain level). Writers (and musicians) may decry the heartless editor or music critic as self-appointed gate-keepers of public taste but they do serve a purpose in the appropriate context. History shows that given a relatively undistorted and open market, systems tend to self-correct whenever one group (whether studios or guilds) capture capital beyond a fair share relative to their value/specialisation (e.g. Napster). The answer is not the elimination of property rights but more careful thinking of how they can be expanded to consider new business models and practices in an electronic age. For example, many of the principles governing economics (e.g. negative externalities) have assumed that property rights led to resources which were excludable and rivalable. Perhaps new theories need to be developed for the other 3 possible combinations. Even OpenSource proponents (as ESR noted) hesitate to take over a project unless the previous author has shown it to be abandoned (squatter's rights?).
If you're willing to overlook short run effects, then economists have shown that over time, all major first world economies average out to roughly the same standard of living and rate of economic growth. Just because it is "novel" (cough*furby*cough) does not mean that it is truely innovative. For example, the concept of containers (trailer equivalent units) which significantly improved global transportation efficiency originated in Australia.
The US has some advantages, it is the biggest single market so you can find suckers... errr... customers somewhere to flog your goods. With the Feds controlling the reserve currency and inflating the monetary base (cough*LTCM*cough) all the financial risks are exported. And clearly the US has the best marketing expertise in the world. However, this chest beating exercise does tend to irritate other countries who are just a innovative but their accomplishments get drowned out in the usual hype (guess who invented things like flight recorders, X-rays, cans, radio, rubber, etc). I believe that per head of population, Japan and until recently the Swiss, outproduced the Americans (see http://papers.nber.org/papers/W7876.pdf).
Personally I think the US could do with a wee bit more social policy innovation as I personally find it rather disturbing to discover people begging in the capital city of one of the richest nations in the world and where psychiatrists and lawyers make more money than scientists or engineers.
LL
ObJoke -
capitalism - unequal sharing of wealth
communism - equal sharing of misery
Serving up static information reduces its utility enormously. Imagine a book today with footnotes, table of contents and page numbering, bookmarks, index, even ads to future releases. Compare this to say a linear scroll. By embedding links within a document, you enhance the non-linear flow of information, allowing one to fold, search, cross-reference and annote to heart's content. Gopher is more suited to a final frozen output whereas today's modern database backed designs allow greater contentual information (e.g. witness the/. whinge about duplicated submissions).
The real mess comes from the fact that people have been sloppy in not separating the structure from the logic from the links (cough*ASP*cough). But then decent tools will eventual arrive and discipline will rexert itself (hopefully).
Does the whole scheme make economic sense? Given the rapid depreciation of hardware, is it not cheaper to contract out to a bunch of datacentres which may have uneven loads (note that studies show web traffic peaks around 9pm). SETI@home worked for individual machines but that was a popular project that captured people's imagination and who were willing to "donate" cycles. If the cost of monitoring an individual machine + electricity cost + network costs + loss opportunity cost + risk, does it make economic sense? The risk factor of having unknown programs potentially loose within a coporate network is enough to give sysadmins heartburn, especially if someone puts in a trojan horse for data stealing.
It'll be interesting to look at their cash-flow distribution plan, not much point if you have to pay out 120% of income to offset marketing + cycle compensation time.
Isn't the point that there is a clear line of responsibility? Much like despite today's million dollar medical diagnostics equipment, you still need a human doctor to take ultimate responsbility? In case of doubt of identity, it is always easier to just not do anything whereas an automated response might not always be the long-term interest. Just take a look at landmines which are essence of fire and forget and look at the problems they are still causing the rest of the world. (BTW has the US joined the full land-mine ban?). With a human in the loop, the judgmental aspect is still preserved and if necessary, modified. I suspect war is one business which should remain "inefficient", if only to give people pause into jumping into it as a quick magic pill.
> Rather than embracing the cross-platform, vendor neutral solution which is the Java platform, like most of the industry, Microsoft is still pushing a single platform, vendor specific solution.
Vendor neutral? This makes perfect sense if MS considers themselves the *ONLY* vendor in the market:-). And it looks like they're doing their best to make that wet-dream come true (Mr "95% market share is not enough").
As an extension to that old adage of the Golden Rule ("he who has the gold writes the rules"), I'd add the collorary "he who writes the rules, defines the gold"). By offering a single target platform, no matter how badly/well implemented, it creates a mass market for other ISVs (assuming you don't mind being borgified into their app-division if you get too big). It will be an interesting marketing exercise to see how they will sell the concept ("write once, crash everywhere" just doesn't cut it). As always, it's the secondary benefits which may prove more useful in the long-term, the Wintel duopology create a mass of low-cost machines for Linux to thrive, perhaps this will commodotise high capacity broadband communications (look at where MS are investing their spare change)?
LL
Re:Profit vs Tragedy of the Commons
on
Deja For Sale
·
· Score: 1
You can probably work out the cost of archives as $n/Terabyte/year (not including capital costs of servers + storage). Not to mention costs of hiring at least one techie to keep the system running and the bandwidth charges. If your attitude is widespread, then the services is probably better off dead (as in dismembered) and the hardware given over to a more useful purpose and the people reassigned to more useful tasks. If a service can't justify itself as a valued social function or serve a market need then it will just degrade beyond recognition. If some entrepreneur keeps it alive and through their own efforts makes it functional (though you may consider their approach stupid or souless) why should you complain? After all you were not interested in keeping it around anyway or much less considered it relevant. A combination of idealism plus half a clue could ressurect the system but finding those type of people is hard (especially the half a clue part).
Specialisation usually leads to beneficial economic effects. What is the failure in this case is the lack of managers who can pay attention to detail and in specifying the contractal obligations of the ssytem (a more extreme view is that governments by definition are inefficient at allocating resources compared with private markets due to information asymmetry). One can argue that a plane cannot replace a boat but then when everything became standardised into TEUs (Trailer equivalent units) people were able to compare the time/cost tradeoffs and make calculated decisions. Unfortunately we haven't yet reached that stage in software engineering where one can look at a piece of code and determine its efficiency.
Tom gave a rather interesting talk at a BioInformatics Open Source Conference (same mob that's into www.bio{perl|java|xml|python}.org and generic tools for hacking the genome) a month ago where he did discuss some of the relevance of peer-peer. The essence of peer-peer is an basically lack of centralised control (something that quite rightly annoys corporations) and dynamic reconnectivity (create new services by adapting old). Since I was there, I've scribbled down a transcript of his talk which may be of some interest (caveat... it's released under OpenContent but Tom should be given right of first proof to make sure I didn't take down his words in vain:-) so treat it as rough working notes until then). Basically we had the old point-point connectivity (think 1-1 e.g. ftp) of the old days, then the client-server paradigm (think 1-n e.g. http) currently. Now we have an arbitrary n-n connection pattern where the programming style is not as clear. Different services have different patterns of usage and new protocols/frameworks are currently being explored like BXXP. However, the value proposition is not gated communities (aka portals) but how many other groups find your services valuable (ie commons). You can't churn users through a limited set of data portals (cough*hotmail*cough) and influence/restrict their movement. Remember the basics of commerce is built upon the premise of an economic good which is excludable and rivalable and peer-peer sorta tweaks that model quite seriously (hard to stop another peer replicating your "stuff"). This becomes a little more interesting when you're trying to search a couple of hundred terabytes of gene annotations, ESTs, microarray data, etc. as you want to combine both completeness (to maximise success) and minimal covering set (to save costs).
Why are the big names interested? As ever, they want new drivers of growth (notice the PC market is becoming saturated). As for the buzzword du jour crowd, well that's what a cluebat is for:-).
Parallelism at that level requires cooperation of the hardware system because you are interacting with a very complex cache system. As for vendors taking their own proprietary path, that is because they've aimed for a slightly different target, IBM with its multiple System on a Chip, Alpha with its simultaneous multithreading, Sparc with their snoopy bus on node card, and SGI with their cache directory. Now if anyone can reconcile these approaches within the same kernel tree, I think they deserve a Gorden Bell prize or two! You also have to keep in mind that Linus intended LInux to be for small (typically one) CPU systems. SGI have publicly said that they design node cards (e.g. the 4-8 CPU brick for their O3000 line) to sacrifice some performance in low-end to gain massive scalability at the high end. You don't expect a jet turbine to be powering your car right? (interesting though it may be).
Slashdot Mirror
Question - what should happen if OSI software supports plugins (note patented software is just a special case of this) and external scripting languages which themselves are not OSI? You cannot insist that they follow the same licensing. Take a look at GE Medical which embeds Tcl/TK within their medical instruments. I doubt whether they will kindly open up their IP.
Also if the software goes kaput (or bought out) for any reason, what should the contrib community code licensing do (considering the legal entity holding the original OSI does not exist). If I was a Gate-2.0 I would conceive of an ingeneous bait and switch tactic where the original stuff was OSI but then deliberately strangle the legal holder and change the terms of the now rootless software as individuals with forks won't have the resources to compete.
LL
This raises philosophical questions. Should a community be held to the norms or ethos of its members? If you subscribe to a service controlled under a legal jurisdictions are you unknowingly binding yourself to an external cultural norm? This is like asking if I used the US dollar I am following the American dream (corporate capitalism), the Euro's gentleman's agreement (state capitalism) or the Australian FairGo (social capitalism - though at the moment the only direction it is going is south).
If you think you are immune from group-think then I congratulate you on your strength of mind. Psychologists have discovered than people in general try to "fit-in" wherever possible. Recall the famous experiments (link anyone?) where they monitored strangers entering an elevator but all the other occupants were instructed to face the back, then the lone holdout also faced the back irrespective of whether there was a rational reason to. Thus if AOL knowingly (by turning a blind eye), and had the power to control the practice but did not forbid music exchanges which they know is illegal, is it an (not quite accessory??) to a crime? Note that economic crims (as self-defined by being against the interests of the incumbants :-( ) are not the really the same as personal criminal acts or even civil violations. If computer companies start competing in other spheres, should they not be bound by similar product safety or service conduct rules?
The law may be an ass in many countries but at least the process is (relatively) open and (given enough pockets) available (unlike proprietary code) within democratic societies. Fundamentally corporations should not be immune from the provisions that govern individuals. This should be separated from the commercial issue of whether music distribution as property right has been violated through deliberate inaction or oversight.
Unfortunately in the long run I think things may hinder the smaller companies as the risk of negative knowledge becomes so great that only MNCs can survive. Eiterh that or MNCs become so overbearing in their zeal to avoid anti-trust provisions that users voluntarily join an independent outfit even if it is located in the South Pole .... (specualtive thought ... if someone set up an ISP on the moon, ignoring latency issues, would it be governed by any earth based legal commercial code?). Since AOL wants to do business in Germany, it has to obey the law no matter how stupid it is. If the law sucks and companies refuse to operate or provide their goods or services, then it is up to the citizens to change the law. Much like you don't want independent militaries operating in your backyard (OK so the feds want a monopoly on controlled violence), I think people much prefer having corporations under at least some form of restriction even though it may create some anomalies in the short term.
LL
As Peter Drucker, once said, the key to growing any organisation is to understand what it's real business is (not just its job). For example, if you think about it carefully, you'd realise that McDonalds is in the property business (as a means to controlling its burger sub-francises). Similarly as others have noted in previous /. posts, Microsoft is not in the OS space but in IP licensing (beg (share options for microserf-lifestyle), borrow (embrace,extent,extinguish) or bully (buyouts)).
... why is TV considered a medium?
So, if you study Yahoo, what is its business? It was originally a directory (useful when the web was growing rapidly) and people wanted directions or a map of possible destinations. However, by adopting the advertising model, it confused its business with that of home shopping. When people are searching for an item, they subconsiously ignore all information not relevant to the direct needs (one reason why google seems to prosper is due to its simpler interface). However, by adopting an advertiser driven revenue model, Yahoo has the incentive of not-so-subtlely distracting your attention and thus increasing your search costs (time take to discover something of relevance). If people want to browse for ideas, they buy home&gardens magazines or gawk at the lifestyles of rich and famous where ads do have a role in branding in the proto-wish list stage. If they are on the hunt for specific information/bargins, then the home-shopping mentality is not relevant.
So, the advertising revenue model depends on the fact that impressions lead to a sale but if the disconnect between reality and perception (ie near zero correlation between 2 events) is high, then business (who do have to fork out for ad space) will just find that a $ of advertising will go better in another medium than through Yahoo.
One wonders whether other "successful" internet startups have fundamentally flawed business models as well and what financial stress will reveal who's swimming naked when the financial-hype receeds.
LL
ObJoke
Because it's neither rare nor well-done.
Socioloists have noted that we invent (boosterism?) myths to explain or expound our tasks (and thus importance) to the outside world (e.g. Hollywood showbiz "glamour" when they are in the business of selling lies). Other scientific studies have tried to work out personal characteristics that explain why we work in particular sectors. For example, psychologists have noted that farmers tend to fall into only a limited subset of personality types (primarily stoic/ plematic) which may be a reflection of the mental toughness or indifference necessary to survive against the forces of Mother Nature (fire/famine/flood). Similarly the hacker ethic may be a self-protective device to glamorise what to others (e.g. marketeers) is a very mind-numbing attention-picking type of work and thus maintain its pool of suck ... errr ... recruits :-) via the call-against-oppression meme (see google on Windows by day, Linux by night). While the popular stereotype (cough*Napster*cough) of rebelling against the forces of evil (aka corporatisation) may appeal to a teenager's sense of drama, it is hard to sustain in the long term as hackerdom becomes mainstream and thus part of the establishment (e.g. witness SourceForge).
Fundamentally IMHO the hacker lacks professional self-reinforcing core/formal ethics such as the medical Hippocratic Oath or the lawyer's client-attorney priviledge. Short-term thinking is no substitute for building an ethos (system of customs and habits) that encourages creative critical thought. The project mentality harkens to the bunker/war-room type psychological stress and it has been noted (from a economic PoV) that it is very effective (if you ignore social side-effects like lack of a life). In fact the very sense of elitism and techno-jargon is probably driving away the better half of the population. Unless the appeal is to both genders, hackerdom is missing half the talent pool. The hacker work ethic may be a necessary survival mechanism in this type of work (continuous creative combinations of techniques to find the rare killer-app) but the major problem is that it (currently) is difficult to scale beyond a cottage industry or bazaar type collective.
Fortunately the world is big enough for all types and if someone who has been ostracised by mainstream society finds a fit within the hacker culture, then all to the better.
LL
OK, your observations are spot on and the Austrian economists are quite vociferous in blaming the government for mismanaging the money supply (probably a good example of bad agency with near-zero feedback). The point is somewhat subtle and highly political but the essense is that ultimately a currency has to be tied to some benchmark so that people can have a consistent framework for evaluating prices and making economic decisions. The gold standard worked IMHO because it was a proxy for the cost of energy which tracked technological productivity through the ages as it shifted through human muscle, domestication of animals, steam engine mining, petrochemical extraction (TNT blasting -> modern extractive techniques). Productivity (leisure theory of money, etc) is what drives the creation of wealth. Societies like Columbian Spain and Dynastic China got royally screwed when they imported monetary assets (Inca gold, Opium Silver) without any real intrinsic increase in productivity (and you could probably add the current IT overhang to the list after future historicans study this decade). However, for political reasons gold was not a good political choice as the ultimate national backing as the major sources of gold production is South Africa and Russia. So whether you were left-wing or right wing, half of your currency was "unreliable" as those governments could influence production.
...
Shifting to a fiat form of currency has caused incredible disruptions, there's no doubt that the abandonment of the bond between industrial productivity and social cohesion has caused incredible stress (witness the failure of the lower class unskilled manual labor esp blacks to gain social mobility). As the result the "market" or collective desire for society to have social stability is currently seeking another anchor. In effect, this has implicity recognised (or encouraged the shift to) recognising that information is the key economic driver rather than energy. When we apply our mental talents to unlocking energy sources in nuclear rather than chemical levels, manipulating light rather than electronics, or the quantum world of micro/nanostructures, the the use of a gold standard becomes a hinderance. The failure of the accounting system is that it cannot measure human capital, the intellectual and innovative drive of individuals to create a better life. In fact, if you look closely, you'd probably find that the very measures that governments suggest (e.g. recent Australia attempt to fund "Innovation" is just as likely to succed as Singapore's 5-year plan to establish "creative arts") are counterproductive as the taxes (or forced savings) crowd out private investments or creative activities. With the (admittedly somewhat haphazardous) deregulation of the financial markets, individuals can create their own securities (witness the spontaneous formation of the RueoDollar market despite the best wishes of the NY/Wash financial-politcal complex). As a result, the private venture capital industry, from sheer defensive need to protect their capital formation from tax erosion and reserve bank inflation have evolved techniques and mechanisms to survive in a highly variable and changing environment. As more groups enter the Internet, these third parties will slowly be recognised in their own right as an independent fiscal authority (which is indirectly threatening to certain national sovereignty). If you like I can email you some links on this.
Again as the above this is just my own imperfect understanding as to some of the structural elements of the world economic systems. As a layperson and not a trained economists, I cannot back up my observations with equations or mathematical formulations but if my observations of behaviour and fitting in of reported "facts" fit my mental model of the world, then it is all I can go on. The gold standard has its use and is still a useful proxy for energy, especially in highly developed courtries like Australia/Canada where it is a reflection of the current tech in energy extraction (uses many of the same extractive processes) but IMHO, the case can be made thatthe source of economic power has shifted decisively towards information (+ higher derivations) and is reflected in new instruments such as social policy bonds, environmental indicators (emerging markets for fresh water), etc
It will be an interesting century.
LL
If you follow the Austrian School of Economics (yes, there are competing schools of thought e.g. Chicago School of Rational Economists, etc), then you realise that capital is a heterogeneous structure of productive elements. People tend to confuse the accounting unit (monetary value) with the tangible/untangible asset (essentially a service generating a revenue stream). Why has the West succeeded as compared with the East? There are a lot of competing claims but I will offer a few generic observations:
... just becaus you are successful now doesn't mean you will always be right. Deeming couldn't convince the American manufacturing industry to take his ideas seriously and as a result the Japanese have now supassed the US in that sector. Given the huge population mass and desire of normal people to improve their lot, there's no reason why India couldn't overtake the US in software services or the Chinese in Engineering Knowledge. In short, the future is unpredictable but a rising tide raises all boats.
- alienation - or the separation (and resulting specialisation) of powers. The modern corporation essentially has 3 functional components - owners (shareholders), governance (directors) and operators (managers). Through legal mechanisms, the transfer of powers and associated trust allows more complex structures to be established. Due to historical baggage of feudal governance structures and patron-style relationships, the East has yet to develop a culture which separates the State from the individual biases. Even if you look at places like Singapore, it is essentially a city state driven by a family core (think Italty) and as a result some financiers are rather disparanging of the capital utilisation rate (compare growth in TFP against other states after discounting human and capital mobility). The alienation eliminates (at at least checks to a large extent) influences such as religion, tribalism, etc from economic factors. The downside is that the government is less powerful than many people think.
- agency costs - consequent to this is how do you ensure that the remote agents (managers/financial brokers) work for your aims (wealth creation) rather than pissing off to South America with your loaned capital. Again the rise of a professional management class as distrinct from a family owned firm with a tendency to treat OPM (other people's money) as personal disposable income allows larger scaling of enterprises. This has been aided by the significant reduction in the cost of internal communications due to technology and now you have firms which number employees in the hundreds of htousands (as compared with 100-1000's early last century). Scale matters and family firms don't have guarentee of talent.
- universal education and democratisation of capital - one of the biggest hinderances towards an efficient market is information asymmetry. What you don't know *WILL* hurt you when it comes to insider information, scams, and other forms of white collar crime. By giving the middle class the chance to pool funds into mutual investments, and the transparency to assess companies in their own right, a more accurate picture of the economy can be reflected in the prices that people are willing to lend at. If you take a look at the share-market in say China/HK, if you are not a professional market specialist, you might as well be gambling at your local casino as minority shareholders get screwed big-time.
- credit creation - the unbundling of the currency from any tangible asset such as the gold standard. This is a rather contentious fiscal "innovation" as it creates inflation (e.g. 70's) but the upside is that greater individual risks can be undertaken (with resulting higher returns). There are some serious side effects (financial crisis/flutuating financial securities) but the industry has developed more advanced liquidation techniques to reallocate capital as a result. As a result, the US financial markets have been more efficient at directing capital to product uses (c.f Japan industry boondoggles) despite its current lower (negative?) savings rate.
I'm sure any professional accountants and economists will harp on about a number of other factors such as anti-trust law (one advantage over Europe), intangible property rights (branding, etc) or derivatives to transfer/concentrate risks but IMHO the above are the main structural elements. This is not to say that all is milk and honey, governments, corporations and individuals have been known to screw up but at least the system has a chance to self-correct. However, it should be noted that people in other countries are not stupid and they can read the books on financial as well as any other capitalist. It also discounts certain elements such as social capital whcih is prized much more highly in the East due to higher population concentrations. The other potential problem I see is institutional arrogance
LL
The OpenSource community has adapted in various ways to address the issue of coexistance. To use a rather crude analogy, BSD is bisexual whereas kits (see VTK where patented stuff can be compiled out or purcahsed separate) is like having a mistress (or 5). Embedded manufacturers are homosexual in that they enjoy all the priviledges of the CCC toolchain but reserve the right to go the otherway at the last instance. Is there a happy marriage which represents a middle ground? RMS would clearly like the code to be virgin but unfortunately his philosophy of choice does not jib well with a command and control mentality (which if you understand military hierachies is inevitable). While there is some comfort that in the long-term the market/community will evolve solutions, your situation needs to be resolved in the short term. Some suggestions for negotiations:
... the Sun Community License as a defensive chastity belt (once you get in you can't check out), university (MIT/CalRegent) condom is disclaim any warrenties, the tactical role of Apple's dildo to try and screw the media control plans of the opposition, However I would suggest using more ... ummmm ... reserved language.
- suggest to the military-industry perplex (contraction of person and complex) that the GPL form the demo/training version which will reduce the cost of controlling sensitive/unstable components.
- reduce to core + open when only the core is restricted. This reduces the support costs of the ancilliary parts which in a larger OpenSource world there are alternatie suppliers of programmers/expertise.
- emphasise the reduced maintainence costs (OK rather difficult in a government bureacracy which has little concept of fiscal discipline) as you will benefit from the reduction of bit-rot and early obsolescence.
- encourage the development of policies which progressively open up closed source due to the risk of a key personnel leaving. The military understand the value of redundacy (at least if they expect combat casualties) and you want to reduce the risk that a crazed terrorist might decide to nuke the dev-team (OK outlandish but this is the paranoia state) and cripple the critical nexus. OpenSource (GPL) distributes the expertise so the risk of system catastrophe is much less.
- try to understand the client's mindset and address their concerns. GPL/OpenSource is not a universal antidote to world poverty, there are situations where it may not be relevant. If the worry is support/responsibility, suggest mechanisms such as a trouble-ticket. Establish the criteria for it not being GPL (and avoid the generic bullshit about national interests and spy vs spy). Most code is for mundane purposes like logistics and task-automation. Suggesting that tax-payer subsidies of $xxx * 500% per line-of-code will not go down well with politicans.
- read stuff from HOW2-advocacy-Linux to understand how a consultant should think. Your primary concern should be to best meet the needs of the mission. For techniques on critical thinking, read up suff on 6 Thinking Hats to get logical rationals (pos,neg) and reduced bias as to the selection of the licensing/distribution/usage. And for gods sake document it so the next perplex doesn't come along and changes the rules of the game (yet again).
- understand the long-term impact of licensing by using market examples
In short, rather than covering your butt, be prepared to stand up for what you believe is the best for your users in gaining access to software that doesn't suck. Sure you make get knocked about a bit in the early stages but at least you won't be screwed for life by being forced to use software that everyone hates.
Good luck,
LL
Come on ... anyone who confuses paper wealth with *real* (tm) wealth deserves whatever sucker trap Wall Street is bound to come up with next. Wealth in its simplest form is the means to produce a future revenue stream and capital (in its broadest sense) a mechanism to shift it through time and space (and into their pockets if certain greedy indidivuals have half a chance). From an personal point of view, the best investment of your time/effort/talent is gaining education/experience. Now those who are less fortunate (ie can't tell the difference between gambling and investing), the financial wizards (for a generous 33% cut of the salami) has kindly offered their services to borrow (banks) or invest (mutual funds) on your behalf. Now after paying for their Lear Jet and CEO-hobbling exercise at Davos, they decide to chuck a few bob at pieces of paper which hypothetically represent ownership of a business system (and any profits/losses - epsecially losses as they capture all the real upside before it gets to the public - thereof) but just to hedge their bets, insist on laws/market mechanisms that prevent others from doing the same thing ie issuing paper (the Fed) or entering the same business (investment financial engineering aka anticompetitive mechanisms). So long as you pick something that privatise gains and socialise losses, you'll be fine (again also assuming that you are comfortable with amorality).
... earn does not mean save) more than a million over their career lifetime, I hope fortune smiles on you and if you are ever in a position to discover the opportunity, you gain the talent to know how to spend your wealth wisely, rather than becoming an economic slave to other people's desires.
Given that a skilled programmer can easily earn (note for idiots
Regards,
LL
If you look at the licenses, then end result is that they encourage different business models. The MS EULA assumes a manufacturing model - pay per widget whether devtool or .bet components. In this situation, they wish to control their IP (building blocks) so that all higher stage developments go through them so they can get an early peek and if necessary buy-out high growth sectors). Read ESR's notes on the difference between end-use and intermediate-use.
... see VTK which offers the basic toolkit free, then sells application kits and linkages to other systems.
:-)) and the GPL is a fundamental threat to this model as it does not fit the fules of the game they are trying to impose on the market. Currently OpenSource is a niche segment (low-end servers, embedded, exotic hardware) but given the fact that the PC market is saturated and the internet plays to Linux strengths (many small penguista experimenting with services), then it makes sense to do a slash and burn to clear the path for the 800-pound gorilla.
The GPL on the other hand assumes that code is communications and the license aims to ensure integrity (purity) and persistence (viral nature). Given that the distribution is unrestricted, then IMHO the model shifts the value to the service model (support, mentoring, accessories, etc). Unfortunately, the margins in this area are slim as it is labor-knowledge intensive and a firm cannot forbid an employee from walking out the door (not until they reintroduce economic slavery a la corporate towns). So you can kiss you 50% gross margins and shareholder stock pyramid goodbye.
The problem comes with the embedded model is that they exist in the gray area between manufacturing and service. IMHO, the problem can be resolved through thinking more carefully about the issue. For example, if you're doing embedded sytems, you might think about distribution of firmware updates as your service model or transmeta code optimisation as a value-added service. All you need to do is to OpenSource something like FCode, intgrate it with Linux as a kernel loadable module, and establish a long-term service contract with customers that purchase your hardware.
Whether this produces superior software is a separate issue. One can argue that something the size of a fortune500 company is too large to be responsive to customers (cf bug tracking/resolution record) and the lack of feedback (which if you assume that code is communications is a valid analogy) creates software that sucks. There are models which combine both Open/Closed source
If you look at it objectively, Microsoft is *NOT* a software or innovation company, it is in the business of IP licensing (buy, borrow or bully
As a defensive tactic, the GPL acts as a poison pill, as there is no point in being taken-over if you cannot embrace, extend and extinguish a competiting standard. It does even the field for new entrants which as any good self-respecting monopolist tells you is anathema to their excess profits. However, the big big disantage of having a purely free (as in beer) software is that you are missing the market signals that indicate the demand for a particular service. RMS may have his heart and soul in the right place but some of the practical issues need a lot more careful thought.
LL
Let me repeat ... there is *NO* global energy (shortage) crisis. What we have is various energy conversion systems (coal/gas/nuclear) with varying costs-ratios. The real problem is regulatory which impacts on two areas outside technical control - distribution and financing. Because of the combination of EPA and certain elements of the environmental movement, it's proven very hard to get energy sources near population centres (combination of NIMBY and powerlines debate) which means fewer high volume / low cost energy sources. Given that the total transmission loss factor can be up to 50% for ~1000km (could an energy expert here give more precise figures?) it simply becomes uneconomic past a certain point. The other consideration is that energy infrastructure has a very long time-scale. When you're thinking of chucking in >$3B for a gas train (those thingys for liquifying natural gas) then you need stable financial environment to do long-term infrastructure investments. Now it may be a matter of perspective but the decadal fluctuations of the dollar-yen-euro (look up Plaza Accord and related history) and sustained deflation (check price of gold which uses roughly similar tech) has driven the cost of oil down to ~$10 which meant zero invementment in exploration and related capital investment which has now caught up to everyone. The Wall Street currency derivatives guys can play silly buggers as far as I am concerned (after all they're only betting against clueless tax-payer funded (central) banks around the world) but for a rational energy company, having someone change the accounting yardstick like a yo-yo on steroids is not conductive to determining the real demand signals the market is trying to give. Despite wishful thinking, wind/wave/solar do not deliveryed the concentrated Watt/hours at an economic price (baring government subsidies) that the average consumer desires unless you are concerned with isolation and reliability issues (e.g. remote telephones).
As for the wheelman or other scooter type derivatices, technology can improve the beast if the free market is left to work and it establishes a niche somewhere. From the shown characteristics (apart from the cute chick factor), it might be useful in natural semi-built areas where trailbikes or cycles would be too bulky or environmentally disruptive. The only challenge is achieving the right power-weight/volume ratio (remember portable). I see some interesting advances that might help - mechtronics (combo of electronics imbedded into the mechanics) will help eliminate dead weight of tramission systems, orbital/radial motors to reduce bulk, distributed intelligence which allows smarts to be in the hand control and the physical parts to drive towards bulk commodities. If I was an investor, it would be a viable proposition depending on the target market segment. Just because California screwed up the deregulation doesn't mean the rest of the world is short or a clue (although given the average idiocy observed in governments I'll reserve judgement).
LL
I would question whether the kacker mentality is healthy in the long-run. Part of the problem is the relative newness of the "mainstream" or massification of computing technology. This naturally attracts early adopters with spare time (ie the pre-teen - professional student) segment which has a natural work approach quite disctinct from the baby-boomers. This can also be seen in places like Japan which is rebelling against the concept of corporate worker drones or samauria salarymen for life. Hwoever is this really the attitude you want to project? Given the sheer mind-numbing tedium of pouring through magalines of code, it is only natural that our mental defenses turn it into a game (in-line jokes, clever credits, etc) otherwise we'd go bonkers having no life. The question is whether this is the "professional" image one wants to retain?
....
If IT is to gain the natural prestige and social statues of other professions (ie not hacker but software engineering) then perhaps some careful though needs to be applied into thinking of a core concept around which you perpetuate teh good points. The medicals have the Hippocratic Oath, the lawyers have the client-attorney privilege. researchers the scientific method (repeatable evidence of theory), what has kackers got? What social/moral/ethical force is there to encourage quality code, open disclosure (e.g. witness Engineering responsibilty of professional negligence), and fair treatment of the suers and fellow hackers?
Perhaps someone should consider formulating a Code of the Hacker (CotH) like
#1 When in doubt, read and grok the code
#2 Honor thy source and those who have coded before thee
#3 Thou shalt not delete or corrupt data needlessly
#4 Avoid contaminating your only backup
#5 Covet not thy fellow hacker's interface or API
Perhaps the hacker mentality of caffeine-driven code-fests is a little dated (and expecially not appeal to the female-gender) and might need some seasoning to balance the serious professional aspects and the zen-like fun aspects as well.
LL
I thought that the copyright/publishing industry was governed by the doctrine of first sale? That once a customer purchases a book/video/whatever that they are then free to do whatever they want with it (including resell it) provided they don't breach copyright? The movie industry has adapted by staging releases of block-busters first through cinimas, then video sales, then TV reruns, then cable, then free-to-air. By staggering the release dates they progressively market to segments with smaller disposable income (which is probably why TiVo scares them). Now this works with movies because the upfront capital costs is high but with books it is almost the reverse direction. It is much easier to write a short-story/novel/fan-fiction than it is to produce a film (though with professional cams and software nowdays you can do a half-decent job). IMHO this creates a surplus of low-quality reading material (steoretypical pulp-paperback) which depresses the overall market (why do you think formula-plots are so popular with publishers?, boy-meets-girl,etc...). Now libraries serve a useful purpose in that they tend to concentrate topics of a particular interest. Whetehr university research, corporate technical reference, or children magnet, they serve a social purpose quite distinct from Amazon which is essentially a catalog service. Perhaps a cluebat is in order in that business apply some critical think (yeah MBA and thinking don't seem to mix well) and really understand the role of libraries/collections and stop treating everyone as a single business model. This might actually force them to *gasp* work for their cushy executive perks instead of brow-beating the techs and firing the editorial-grunts to put the fear o god into them. I suspect that the concept of libraries / archives is going to be radically differnet as museums/galleries/science centres muscle in onto the multimedia scene and start competting for attention with books.
LL
Well, fellow Kiwi (if you are really in NZ and not ISPofConvenience), some minor adjustments ...
... this is to state the point that the concept of "fairness" is dependent on your ethical framework, what some people consider "fair" can be in fact shown to be arbitrary and ego-based. Offending the beliefs of sub-groups (e.g. using the Islamic Koran as advertising is a boo-boo found out by one fast-food chain which replicated the flag of one Arabic country) may not make economic sense but when you're dealing in a non mono-cultural environment can be a cause of long-term resentment (e.g. witness the Waitangi Treaty where the concept of sovereignty has slightly different meanings in the Maori and English version).
... the problem is that once business activities become offshore, then it is possible to continually shift resources out of the grasp of tax scrutiny. Even if you consider taxes a necessary business cost and any investment should be considered in terms of net after tax, given compound interest and taxes as a dissipating force, for some corporations it makes sense (especially if activities are easily relocatable) to have a rolling investment in the latest country to offer tax-holidays. Now you may consider this to be a net transfer of wealth from developing countries citizens to gain the dubious prestrige or bragging rights of hosting "hi-tech" MNCs but given today's sophisticated financial/legal complex designed specifically to shift the burden onto ordinary citizens who can't escape PAYE or GST, you can see that the tax base is shifted disproportinately onto individuals that can't benefit from trusts or options. Take a look at News Corp. Analysis have noted that because it uses accounting discrepencies in Australia (as vs US peers) it gains some marginal advantages which is reflected in a somewhat stronger stock price which is then used as over-inflated script for Mergers and Acqusitions. There are a number of tricks that global corporations can use to minimise tax burdens that are not available to the average person (foreign controlled entities, bermuda IP havans, singaporean cap-gains free holdings, Tongean trusts, cascading losses crystalised at high-tax juristictions, etc). In summary, becauses taxes are tied to a geographical location (despite the ferverant enactments of US tax-citizenship and European tax borders) there will always be countries that can see benefits in providing off-shore "financial" services (cough*BVI*cough). Of course first-world governments are not immune as they find out with sophsicated financial engineering, any subsidy can be trasmitted offshore In summary economic "efficiecy" may come at a social cost (export of pollution/wastes/risks) to third world countries that may rebound in the future when those countries respond by emigrating. Certain not-so-hidden objectives in the US and Europe in promoting globalism is the hope that by improving the financial state of unstable developing countries, they avoid the political necessity (cough CNN effect*cough) of sending their troops on unnecessary pacification exercises, not to mention keeping the wogs out of their middle-class comfort zone (cough*Australia*cough).
3) Not strictly speaking relavent
Taxation
So in summary, though the theory is nice, the details need serious attention to ensure that social responsibility is also globalsed as well as economic benefits.
LL
Comes down to your definition of "fair". There are a number of historically compounding events
... not a gambling mecca).
... there is a hidden cost in overworking your people so much that they quit and change careers, not to mention disruption of family life when relocating. People who are fearful and resentful cannot reason as well as politicians in cushy jobs.
1) special interests find it a lot easier to band together and lobby for privileges or corporate handouts/franchises (cough*Bono Act*cough) where the benefits are privatised but the costs are socialised
2) many states don't have a open/free capital market and bureacratic misallocation of resources can often lead to perceived dumping and lost opportunities
3) you are hitting many social gaps in beliefs and what is considered "property". For example, some people would consider that AT&T "stole" their logo from a Budhhist motif and claims of biopiracy have created resentment of pharmaceutical companies. You also enter some very subtle issues here (e.g.fencing of the intellectual commons in the genome map, appropriation of tribal marks e.g. tattoos for commercial PR gain)
4) a perception that the biggest sets the rules to suit themselves (you can guess who the instigators of the intellectual rights portion of WTO was) which causes a lot of resentment and ill-will (not to mention being prey on by more sophisticated financial manipulations). You try explaining pump and dump tactics on societies which don't really understand what a stock exchange is really for (hint
5) socio-economic discontinuities as the lossening of bonds betweeo corporates and workers lead to social stress
In short, the benefits are nebulous (although historically proven) and the downside is up-front, especially to marginalised unskilled labor who are suddenly faced with a couple of billion competitors. Traditionally governments have attempted to address this with the taxes of any increased economic activity to help disadvantaged groups but with globalisation, you can shift production base to exploit tax policy differentials (cough*transfer pricing + vertical integration*cough). In short, the traditional tools for balancing / redistributing social costs are inadequate in a multi-juristictional environment.
"Fairness" requires a common framework of values and ethics and the Western-centric notions of rational economism and property exclusion/rivalry don't always go down well.
LL
If a company wishes to encourage certain behaviour which is beneficial to its business activities, there are a number of things they can do (including non-monetary rewards). Take a look at how some of the more innovative companies operate and feel free to toss in your ideas.
- (Wall Street bonus pool) announce that a certain percentage of sales will go into a bonus pool which would be divied up to customers (and internal staff) that contributed good suggestions (sorta the hi-tech equivalent of cereal prize-draws)
- (philosopher in residence/patronage) announce that the best person has been selected to serve as some honorary role in independent committee/oversight e.g. Stallman or Bruce Perens
- (MLM) offer freebies like tickets to a MICE (meeting/incentive/convention/exhibition) the company sponsors or open tour of their labs to meet the principles. Good for identifying good techies with potential on reducing recruitment costs (see those OpenSource projects can come in useful afterall)
- (SGI) offer to sponsor OpenSource projects that puts the client in charge. If motivating geeks is akin to herding cats, the smart money goes to whoever provides the best catnip.
- offer to fund downstream activities or co-marketing strategies (e.g. VTK and add-on modules) or even provide small research funds to help them along. This requires some degree of trust which may not always be available in PHB managers.
- include their names prominently in internal newsletters or external reports (peer recognition). This is based on the observation that in today's celebrity driven world, fame is harder to achieve than money.
It should be noted that many OpenSource projects are merely concentrations of dedicated users. Enlightened alpha-architects (e.g. Perl community) that aim to empower the end-user create a win-win situation for everyone provided they don't attempt to be greedy and screw the staff/users over because the prime users are just as clueful (if not smarter) than the original programmers.
LL
Any system has flaws, the best ones tend to recognise it and provide for alternatives and outlets. Many of the problems described (information monopoly) exist because the law/structures passed were intended for a less sophisticated age (e.g. patent laws for when the US was entering an industrialised phase). The fact that we've advanced to the stage where there's a surplus of ideas means that we need to apply other checks/balances to maintain an equilibrium (e.g. anti-competitive laws overrides patent law). However, to point out the excesses exclusively without pointing out the benefits seems to be a little unfair. Without constant regeneration, even ideas and professional qualifications are effected by bit rot. That is why organisations/institutions wrre formed to persist ideas/property rights beyond any individual lifespan.
Some of the thoughts are worth investigating IMHO. The concept of property laws come about because it was more efficient to separate beneficial ownership from control from operation (e.g. reflected in maritime law which followed owner-master-captain chain of authority/delegation). Intellectual property rights are merely a codification of the business practices that exist at the time (e.g. copyright with publishing). In practice the system generally works as the division of labor leads to specialisation and a much more professional conduct (e.g. many publishers will only work through an agent on the assumption that the quality/schedule is at least above a certain level). Writers (and musicians) may decry the heartless editor or music critic as self-appointed gate-keepers of public taste but they do serve a purpose in the appropriate context. History shows that given a relatively undistorted and open market, systems tend to self-correct whenever one group (whether studios or guilds) capture capital beyond a fair share relative to their value/specialisation (e.g. Napster). The answer is not the elimination of property rights but more careful thinking of how they can be expanded to consider new business models and practices in an electronic age. For example, many of the principles governing economics (e.g. negative externalities) have assumed that property rights led to resources which were excludable and rivalable. Perhaps new theories need to be developed for the other 3 possible combinations. Even OpenSource proponents (as ESR noted) hesitate to take over a project unless the previous author has shown it to be abandoned (squatter's rights?).
LL
If you're willing to overlook short run effects, then economists have shown that over time, all major first world economies average out to roughly the same standard of living and rate of economic growth. Just because it is "novel" (cough*furby*cough) does not mean that it is truely innovative. For example, the concept of containers (trailer equivalent units) which significantly improved global transportation efficiency originated in Australia.
... errr ... customers somewhere to flog your goods. With the Feds controlling the reserve currency and inflating the monetary base (cough*LTCM*cough) all the financial risks are exported. And clearly the US has the best marketing expertise in the world. However, this chest beating exercise does tend to irritate other countries who are just a innovative but their accomplishments get drowned out in the usual hype (guess who invented things like flight recorders, X-rays, cans, radio, rubber, etc). I believe that per head of population, Japan and until recently the Swiss, outproduced the Americans (see http://papers.nber.org/papers/W7876.pdf).
The US has some advantages, it is the biggest single market so you can find suckers
Personally I think the US could do with a wee bit more social policy innovation as I personally find it rather disturbing to discover people begging in the capital city of one of the richest nations in the world and where psychiatrists and lawyers make more money than scientists or engineers.
LL
ObJoke -
capitalism - unequal sharing of wealth
communism - equal sharing of misery
Serving up static information reduces its utility enormously. Imagine a book today with footnotes, table of contents and page numbering, bookmarks, index, even ads to future releases. Compare this to say a linear scroll. By embedding links within a document, you enhance the non-linear flow of information, allowing one to fold, search, cross-reference and annote to heart's content. Gopher is more suited to a final frozen output whereas today's modern database backed designs allow greater contentual information (e.g. witness the /. whinge about duplicated submissions).
The real mess comes from the fact that people have been sloppy in not separating the structure from the logic from the links (cough*ASP*cough). But then decent tools will eventual arrive and discipline will rexert itself (hopefully).
LL
Does the whole scheme make economic sense? Given the rapid depreciation of hardware, is it not cheaper to contract out to a bunch of datacentres which may have uneven loads (note that studies show web traffic peaks around 9pm). SETI@home worked for individual machines but that was a popular project that captured people's imagination and who were willing to "donate" cycles. If the cost of monitoring an individual machine + electricity cost + network costs + loss opportunity cost + risk, does it make economic sense? The risk factor of having unknown programs potentially loose within a coporate network is enough to give sysadmins heartburn, especially if someone puts in a trojan horse for data stealing.
It'll be interesting to look at their cash-flow distribution plan, not much point if you have to pay out 120% of income to offset marketing + cycle compensation time.
LL
Isn't the point that there is a clear line of responsibility? Much like despite today's million dollar medical diagnostics equipment, you still need a human doctor to take ultimate responsbility? In case of doubt of identity, it is always easier to just not do anything whereas an automated response might not always be the long-term interest. Just take a look at landmines which are essence of fire and forget and look at the problems they are still causing the rest of the world. (BTW has the US joined the full land-mine ban?). With a human in the loop, the judgmental aspect is still preserved and if necessary, modified. I suspect war is one business which should remain "inefficient", if only to give people pause into jumping into it as a quick magic pill.
LL
> Rather than embracing the cross-platform, vendor neutral solution which is the Java platform, like most of the industry, Microsoft is still pushing a single platform, vendor specific solution.
:-). And it looks like they're doing their best to make that wet-dream come true (Mr "95% market share is not enough").
Vendor neutral? This makes perfect sense if MS considers themselves the *ONLY* vendor in the market
As an extension to that old adage of the Golden Rule ("he who has the gold writes the rules"), I'd add the collorary "he who writes the rules, defines the gold"). By offering a single target platform, no matter how badly/well implemented, it creates a mass market for other ISVs (assuming you don't mind being borgified into their app-division if you get too big). It will be an interesting marketing exercise to see how they will sell the concept ("write once, crash everywhere" just doesn't cut it). As always, it's the secondary benefits which may prove more useful in the long-term, the Wintel duopology create a mass of low-cost machines for Linux to thrive, perhaps this will commodotise high capacity broadband communications (look at where MS are investing their spare change)?
LL
You can probably work out the cost of archives as $n/Terabyte/year (not including capital costs of servers + storage). Not to mention costs of hiring at least one techie to keep the system running and the bandwidth charges. If your attitude is widespread, then the services is probably better off dead (as in dismembered) and the hardware given over to a more useful purpose and the people reassigned to more useful tasks. If a service can't justify itself as a valued social function or serve a market need then it will just degrade beyond recognition. If some entrepreneur keeps it alive and through their own efforts makes it functional (though you may consider their approach stupid or souless) why should you complain? After all you were not interested in keeping it around anyway or much less considered it relevant. A combination of idealism plus half a clue could ressurect the system but finding those type of people is hard (especially the half a clue part).
TANSTAAFL
LL
Specialisation usually leads to beneficial economic effects. What is the failure in this case is the lack of managers who can pay attention to detail and in specifying the contractal obligations of the ssytem (a more extreme view is that governments by definition are inefficient at allocating resources compared with private markets due to information asymmetry). One can argue that a plane cannot replace a boat but then when everything became standardised into TEUs (Trailer equivalent units) people were able to compare the time/cost tradeoffs and make calculated decisions. Unfortunately we haven't yet reached that stage in software engineering where one can look at a piece of code and determine its efficiency.
LL
Tom gave a rather interesting talk at a BioInformatics Open Source Conference (same mob that's into www.bio{perl|java|xml|python}.org and generic tools for hacking the genome) a month ago where he did discuss some of the relevance of peer-peer. The essence of peer-peer is an basically lack of centralised control (something that quite rightly annoys corporations) and dynamic reconnectivity (create new services by adapting old). Since I was there, I've scribbled down a transcript of his talk which may be of some interest (caveat ... it's released under OpenContent but Tom should be given right of first proof to make sure I didn't take down his words in vain :-) so treat it as rough working notes until then). Basically we had the old point-point connectivity (think 1-1 e.g. ftp) of the old days, then the client-server paradigm (think 1-n e.g. http) currently. Now we have an arbitrary n-n connection pattern where the programming style is not as clear. Different services have different patterns of usage and new protocols/frameworks are currently being explored like BXXP. However, the value proposition is not gated communities (aka portals) but how many other groups find your services valuable (ie commons). You can't churn users through a limited set of data portals (cough*hotmail*cough) and influence/restrict their movement. Remember the basics of commerce is built upon the premise of an economic good which is excludable and rivalable and peer-peer sorta tweaks that model quite seriously (hard to stop another peer replicating your "stuff"). This becomes a little more interesting when you're trying to search a couple of hundred terabytes of gene annotations, ESTs, microarray data, etc. as you want to combine both completeness (to maximise success) and minimal covering set (to save costs).
Why are the big names interested? As ever, they want new drivers of growth (notice the PC market is becoming saturated). As for the buzzword du jour crowd, well that's what a cluebat is for :-).
LL
What might be a more interesting question is can you mix cards and CPUs of different frequencies and even architectures. For example, if there is enough critical mass opt-in for say the RapidIO standard (a big if), then if CPUs/kernels (not just Linux) standardise on compatible IPC mechanisms and shared data structures/objects, you can possibly have a system where you only upgrade the CPU rather than throwing out the whole machine every 2-3 years. Due to its complexity and human intensive nature, software changes more slowly than hardware where you can just ramp up the shrink process. There are already some hints of this with the HandSpring module, where you retain your familiar interface but just up the capabilities according to your preference. However, I suspect to do this properly with Linux may require some thought into how the ELF object code format can support mupport multiple systems.
Perhaps something to discuss at that new 64bit unix mailing list set up recently. LL