I like the stack of lost floppy disks sitting in the campus lab. One day I started looking through them.
On the third disk I noticed a file named "Moms Credit Card". We can all guess what the file contained.
Fortunately for that poor student, I'm a nice guy and I wiped the disk so that the information wouldn't be abused. However, the next disk contained Frat Party planning meeting minutes that were quite entertaining. (Someone was violating campus alcohol rules.)
Anyway, I stopped looking after the 5th disk, and there were over 500 lost disks in that lab. All of the disks were found withing the last 4 months. If you want to get dirt to use on people, visit a college lab, shuffle through the lost disks, hold onto the information for a few years and then see how much that lost disk is worth to them.
If I remember right, the DoD standard was to erase the file by writing random bits over it 7 times....although that was before some researchers found that you could still read the original data if you had a scanning electron microscope.
I'm not trying to troll, or seem naive here, but is paranoia in the US seriously that high?
Do you honestly think "suits" would turn up at someone's door over such a thing? And if they did, would it be a problem if you had nothing to hide? Could you get compensation for invasion of privacy and/or intimidation.
Well, let's see, with talk of mining commercial data sources for anything "out of the ordinary", yes. I would be surprised if I am not already flagged in some government computer for searching the web to learn more about gas turbine engines and "fuel air explosions" so I can know enough to design a small gas turbine engine. I think I'll go in person to a book store and buy reference books with cash.
I don't expect that "suits" would come to the door, but having a record in their computer isn't a comforting thought.
This year it was a toolkit, looks to be between $5 and $10. Last year it was some outdoors gear in a similar price range.
The company I work for has people from many countries and backgrounds, most of my co-workers don't take vacations at Christmas, so it dosen't bother me that the gifts are inexpensive.
I would be a bit annoyed if they gave me a bobblehead of anyone in the company. I suggest turning it into an art-piece.
This might work if you assume "advertisers" instead of "spammers" and if the demographic information is accurate enough for good targeting.
Advertisers are willing to pay even up to $10/person if they can get their message to the right person.
If you can get your message seen by the purchase decision makeer, that is worth something. If you are just giving your message to someone who dosen't care (as spammers do), then the message distribution isn't worth much per person.
Unless your compiler, linker, assembler, libraries, or source code have been modified.
Sheesh, dosen't anyone read old ACM articles?
http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/
At some point, unless you build your system from scratch, cross compile on multiple systems, burn your own BIOS ROM, and write the microcode for your NIC and all other interface devices, you are trusting *SOMEONE ELSE* for the security of your system.
That is an interesting question. To take that line of thought a bit further...
How long before it is a crime to release software (or make available source code) that contains known security flaws?
If running a non-up-to-the-latest-patch OS or application is a crime in some industries, what liability does the software provider have? If they know of a security flaw or weakness, can they still release it for use in those industries?
Then, would it become a requirement to do a certain amount of testing for security weaknesses before releasing software?
If that happens, would sharing "in-development" source code (sourceforge) become illegal for "security reasons"?
An open AP might just be a service to partners and clients if it is designed correctly.
Of course, you wouldn't want the AP to be connected to your internal net, and you would want to add QoS to limit bandwidth and possibly even increase latency to a point. You would also need to monitor for abuses and maybe even tweak your antenna placement so that the signal dosen't go very far outside of the building.
However, I think that a blanket connection between open APs and terrorism is faulty at best, and an effort to boost some special interests at worst.
What's next? Regulation of the open ethernet ports or phone lines in lobbies and libraries?
I suppose I am aiding terrorism by providing an open (but regularly monitored) open AP for the couple hundred feet around my apartment and for providing ethernet drops to my neighbors.
I know it isn't a paranoid design, but it is regulated through monitoring. If it is abused I'll lock out the abusers and depending on the specific abuse, I might even do offensive data collection and hand data over to the authorities. I think my "policies" are sufficient so that I can help out neighbors that need access and keep abuses to a minumum.
Must all communication be trackable? I guess we have freedom to speak, but not to listen?
How much is retrofit for other purposes? Like the story a few months ago about using pneumatic tubes to run network cabling?
The Seattle underground is only used in a couple areas for tours.
There are other bits of urban decay in most cities, but there are places where deprecated infrastructure is repurposed. The big question is, are we recycling most of our outmoded infrastructure, or are we accumulating a huge amount of cruft in our cities?
A few years ago when the home radon testing was the popular thing to talk about there was a story of a guy that set off the alarms going in to work at a nuclear research lab. Supposedly he was getting a measurable dosage of radiation from the radon in his home.
I don't know if there is any truth in that story, but it helped the sales of radon detectors.
I wonder how many false positives are caused by natural radiation from things like radon.
I don't have a family. I don't have a life. I program computers by day and get my entertainment from cable TV.
I spend $35 on cable TV to watch Farscape, Stargate, Law and Order, Junkyard Wars, Simpsons, and Star Trek. $15 of that is just for expanded cable so I can watch Farscape...is it so hard to understand that I might be willing to fork over another $20 per month for a show that I really like instead of walking down to the video store to rent something decent once a week?
Agreed, responsible use of credit needs to be learned sometime, but it is a bit easier to pay off $10k of credit card debt when you have a $50k/yr job than when you have a minimum wage job. And you need to start paying on those college loans when you stop going to school, even if you didn't finish your degree and don't have a high paying job.
I know it is just business, but I think that most credit card companies have practices that are as bad as highway robbery.
Then again, I have also known people who have paid money tree 300% intrest (rolling short-term loans over for multiple months) because they didn't want to bother their friends for a $100 loan.
Personally, I knew that I didn't have the money or the ability to pay for things so I refused to get a credit card until I graduated from college. It was just too much of a risk. Same for other temptations - I couldn't afford the concequences of making a mistake, so I removed the option.
Unfortuantely, college offers a huge realm of options and most college students can't afford to make a mistake with many of the options, but some still play with fire and get burned.
Credit card companies just get on my nerves because I didn't want one and I was hit-up to get one at least 20 times a day in the first week of each semester. By the end of the day I wanted to punch the salespeople - it is like setting up a liquer store outside of a rehab clinic - these people have too much to loose and both the institution and the companies are trying to exploit a weakness and ruin their lives.
Credit cards are also a huge liability for college students. I have more than one friend who had to drop out because they didn't use their credit card responsibly.
It is sad, they had more talent than I did, but they are still doing fast food delivery four years after they should have graduated.
I have the problem of bouncing between simulations that I want to do. Currently I want to simulate some alternative automobile radiator designs - thermodyamic, hydrodynamic, and aerodynamic.
Any suggestions of where to start other than a pile of textbooks and a couple years of time?
And all of the shows that I record are on the scifi channel (which is the only reason why I subscribe to cable) and even though I have the option to skip commercials, I still end up watching about 50% of the commercials in the programs that I record.
The posts that started this whole thread were along the lines of:
a) My tax dollars go to the government b) Government funds research c) Research produces software
The assertations of one group have been:
d) if BSD license, MS uses software, charges, and taxpayers pay twice.
The assertations of others (maybe just me) are:
d) if GPL license, MS pays twice (they pay taxes too). if BSD license, initial costs are lowered in everyone's software development.
I am glad that you developed software and are willing to share it and I can understand why you might still want control and the ability to make a buck, but when it is the communal tax dollars of individuals *AND* corporations that provide individuals with jobs, I think that the results of that research should be released in the MOST FREE form that is usable by ALL, individual and closed source corporate alike which currently is BSD.
Costs are irrelevant when setting the price for a software product
Okay, maybe I slept through economics, but it seems to me that the customers would be smart enough to change their willingness to pay.
X people will buy a product with Y features at price Z (X-Delta) people will by the same product at price (Z+Markup).
If the cost to develop the software + safety margin is > X' * Z' (where Delta and Markup maximize profit), then they shouldn't develop it in the first place.
For some products, lower the price, the sales increase at a higher rate than the price was lowered, and you get more profit than you would at a higher price.
So, if I have a lemondade stand, I can choose to sell each glass for $20. In some situations, I might be able to sell a glass.
If I have a competitor across the street selling lemonade for $1 per glass, then I will never be able to sell a glass unless I lower my price.
If there is a lemon tree next door with a sign saying "Free Lemons", a percentage of the potential customers will make their own lemonade unless I drop my price to something more reasonable like $.10 or $.25
Corporate consumers of software are very good about doing this sort of analysis. For any organization large enough to develop the software on their own (and potentially even market it and compete against you), this type of analysis will be done. For any software that large organizations buy, the normal laws of economics do apply.
Software economics work fundamentally different than normal economics, get that through your head.
Please clarify - Are you saying that end-user software is different? Or in-house software?
Where is it proven (or even documented) that software economics are different than normal economics?
Sure, the per-unit costs are lower, but there are other industries where this is true - like music and book publishing.
OK, maybe you will understand now: Software companies will charge whatever the market will pay. It's irrelevant how much the software cost.
Reread that statement. I did not say that prices are irrelevant, I said that costs are irrelevant in setting the price.
It is a fine statement, I just don't think that it is that simple.
A company won't sell software for less than the cost unless they are stupid.
Price is always a factor in purchasing. In the multiple product marketplace, features is another, only a stupid company would raise their prices higher than their competitors to provide the same level of service and features.
What the market is willing to pay will change. It can change due to market saturuation, marketing, competition, etc. If the cost to enter the market drops enough and the profit margin is high enough, another competitor will enter with a much lower priced product and the price that the market is willing to pay will drop.
No, I'm actually arguing that Microsoft is creating and encouring the creation 3rd party vendors for accessibility tools, software testing tools, games, and a lot of other markets by creating APIs explicitly to help them.
Microsoft *is* aggressive, and maybe even a 1000lb gorilla, but it isn't out to take over the universe, just to solve the needs of customers. *really* It suprised me when I started talking to people working at Microsoft, but they do want to solve the needs of the customers.
Software companies will charge whatever the market will pay. It's irrelevant how much the software cost.
In a world where more than one software package is competing for a single market. This isn't Microsoft vs the rest of the world, this is "Streets and Trips vs other map sofware", "MS Money vs Quicken", "MSN vs AOL", even "MS office vs star office, KDE office, wordperfect/quatro, etc" and "Active Directory vs iPlanet and NDS"
Every technology produced by MS has one or more competitors...if research finds a better way to work and all competitors can use it, they will each implement it and reduce their costs. Maybe this means they have more money for other new features, that they will charge for, but it makes them more productive.
Any publicly traded company has an obligation to attempt to increase market share. This is done by adjusting price, features, support, and marketing to compete.
Why do we want the government to fund an alternative to Microsoft Operating Systems?
We turn over our prisons to corporations.
We have turned our universities into corporation-like profit focused enterprises.
We are talking about turning education over to corporations.
We frequenly turn sewage, water, and waste over to corporations.
We even let corporations like oil companies control critical infrastructure.
When government helps corporate profits, more people are employed, more taxes are paid, and more investments are made.
Despite the fact that many people think Microsoft is evil, they haven't taken thousands of steps that could have taken to put a stranglehold on users.
Microsoft has intentially left the accessibility tool (screen readers, speach tools, etc) market open, just providing APIs and allowing other companies to create products for this market.
Microsoft has also left the graphics software market open as opposed to creating a pagemaker or photoshop look-alike. Similar in the CAD market prior to Visio (and visio was more for the scriptability side than the CAD type tools). If you look around, Microsoft assists quite a few niche markets by providing APIs to help these markets while intentionally staying out of the market.
This is naive at best. Programmer time and effort is the smallest of Microsoft's major expenses. The Microsoft R&D budget is structured to cover the sort of marketing expenses required to 'develop' a commanding hold on the market. Microsoft is not going to fail to take an opportunity to lock out competitors because they'll save a few days of some programmer's time.
I would like to see the breakdown of Microsoft's budget that shows this because I pretty sure it isn't true.
BTW - R&D are two completely seperate sets of groups within MS. There is a Research division, and then there are product groups. Within the product groups there are Program Managers that specify features and talk with customers, developers that write the code, and testers. Marketing is a completely different group and they are so disconnected that the best they can do is come up with the "99.999% uptime" campaign instead of advertizing things like Active Directory.
I think that Linux users (and I still use linux on a few boxes at home) give Microsoft way too much credit in the marketing department.
Read "I sing the body electronic" by Fred Moody if you want to see how Microsoft really works.
Slashdot Mirror
I like the stack of lost floppy disks sitting in the campus lab. One day I started looking through them.
On the third disk I noticed a file named "Moms Credit Card". We can all guess what the file contained.
Fortunately for that poor student, I'm a nice guy and I wiped the disk so that the information wouldn't be abused. However, the next disk contained Frat Party planning meeting minutes that were quite entertaining. (Someone was violating campus alcohol rules.)
Anyway, I stopped looking after the 5th disk, and there were over 500 lost disks in that lab. All of the disks were found withing the last 4 months. If you want to get dirt to use on people, visit a college lab, shuffle through the lost disks, hold onto the information for a few years and then see how much that lost disk is worth to them.
If I remember right, the DoD standard was to erase the file by writing random bits over it 7 times....although that was before some researchers found that you could still read the original data if you had a scanning electron microscope.
Well, let's see, with talk of mining commercial data sources for anything "out of the ordinary", yes. I would be surprised if I am not already flagged in some government computer for searching the web to learn more about gas turbine engines and "fuel air explosions" so I can know enough to design a small gas turbine engine. I think I'll go in person to a book store and buy reference books with cash.
I don't expect that "suits" would come to the door, but having a record in their computer isn't a comforting thought.
This year it was a toolkit, looks to be between $5 and $10. Last year it was some outdoors gear in a similar price range.
The company I work for has people from many countries and backgrounds, most of my co-workers don't take vacations at Christmas, so it dosen't bother me that the gifts are inexpensive.
I would be a bit annoyed if they gave me a bobblehead of anyone in the company. I suggest turning it into an art-piece.
This might work if you assume "advertisers" instead of "spammers" and if the demographic information is accurate enough for good targeting.
Advertisers are willing to pay even up to $10/person if they can get their message to the right person.
If you can get your message seen by the purchase decision makeer, that is worth something. If you are just giving your message to someone who dosen't care (as spammers do), then the message distribution isn't worth much per person.
Unless your compiler, linker, assembler, libraries, or source code have been modified.
Sheesh, dosen't anyone read old ACM articles?
http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/
At some point, unless you build your system from scratch, cross compile on multiple systems, burn your own BIOS ROM, and write the microcode for your NIC and all other interface devices, you are trusting *SOMEONE ELSE* for the security of your system.
That is an interesting question. To take that line of thought a bit further...
How long before it is a crime to release software (or make available source code) that contains known security flaws?
If running a non-up-to-the-latest-patch OS or application is a crime in some industries, what liability does the software provider have? If they know of a security flaw or weakness, can they still release it for use in those industries?
Then, would it become a requirement to do a certain amount of testing for security weaknesses before releasing software?
If that happens, would sharing "in-development" source code (sourceforge) become illegal for "security reasons"?
An open AP might just be a service to partners and clients if it is designed correctly.
Of course, you wouldn't want the AP to be connected to your internal net, and you would want to add QoS to limit bandwidth and possibly even increase latency to a point. You would also need to monitor for abuses and maybe even tweak your antenna placement so that the signal dosen't go very far outside of the building.
However, I think that a blanket connection between open APs and terrorism is faulty at best, and an effort to boost some special interests at worst.
What's next? Regulation of the open ethernet ports or phone lines in lobbies and libraries?
I suppose I am aiding terrorism by providing an open (but regularly monitored) open AP for the couple hundred feet around my apartment and for providing ethernet drops to my neighbors.
I know it isn't a paranoid design, but it is regulated through monitoring. If it is abused I'll lock out the abusers and depending on the specific abuse, I might even do offensive data collection and hand data over to the authorities. I think my "policies" are sufficient so that I can help out neighbors that need access and keep abuses to a minumum.
Must all communication be trackable? I guess we have freedom to speak, but not to listen?
How much of this exists?
How much is retrofit for other purposes? Like the story a few months ago about using pneumatic tubes to run network cabling?
The Seattle underground is only used in a couple areas for tours.
There are other bits of urban decay in most cities, but there are places where deprecated infrastructure is repurposed. The big question is, are we recycling most of our outmoded infrastructure, or are we accumulating a huge amount of cruft in our cities?
In a way, both and neither.
The turing test is to see if a person can tell the difference between another person over a teletype terminal and a computer.
If you can't tell the difference between a computer and a human, is the computer alive? However, if it is inorganic, is it alive?
A few years ago when the home radon testing was the popular thing to talk about there was a story of a guy that set off the alarms going in to work at a nuclear research lab. Supposedly he was getting a measurable dosage of radiation from the radon in his home.
I don't know if there is any truth in that story, but it helped the sales of radon detectors.
I wonder how many false positives are caused by natural radiation from things like radon.
I don't have a family. I don't have a life. I program computers by day and get my entertainment from cable TV.
I spend $35 on cable TV to watch Farscape, Stargate, Law and Order, Junkyard Wars, Simpsons, and Star Trek. $15 of that is just for expanded cable so I can watch Farscape...is it so hard to understand that I might be willing to fork over another $20 per month for a show that I really like instead of walking down to the video store to rent something decent once a week?
Offtopic:
Agreed, responsible use of credit needs to be learned sometime, but it is a bit easier to pay off $10k of credit card debt when you have a $50k/yr job than when you have a minimum wage job. And you need to start paying on those college loans when you stop going to school, even if you didn't finish your degree and don't have a high paying job.
I know it is just business, but I think that most credit card companies have practices that are as bad as highway robbery.
Then again, I have also known people who have paid money tree 300% intrest (rolling short-term loans over for multiple months) because they didn't want to bother their friends for a $100 loan.
Personally, I knew that I didn't have the money or the ability to pay for things so I refused to get a credit card until I graduated from college. It was just too much of a risk. Same for other temptations - I couldn't afford the concequences of making a mistake, so I removed the option.
Unfortuantely, college offers a huge realm of options and most college students can't afford to make a mistake with many of the options, but some still play with fire and get burned.
Credit card companies just get on my nerves because I didn't want one and I was hit-up to get one at least 20 times a day in the first week of each semester. By the end of the day I wanted to punch the salespeople - it is like setting up a liquer store outside of a rehab clinic - these people have too much to loose and both the institution and the companies are trying to exploit a weakness and ruin their lives.
Offtopic - Re: Credit Cards
Credit cards are also a huge liability for college students. I have more than one friend who had to drop out because they didn't use their credit card responsibly.
It is sad, they had more talent than I did, but they are still doing fast food delivery four years after they should have graduated.
I have the problem of bouncing between simulations that I want to do. Currently I want to simulate some alternative automobile radiator designs - thermodyamic, hydrodynamic, and aerodynamic.
Any suggestions of where to start other than a pile of textbooks and a couple years of time?
And all of the shows that I record are on the scifi channel (which is the only reason why I subscribe to cable) and even though I have the option to skip commercials, I still end up watching about 50% of the commercials in the programs that I record.
Strange, this sounds familier.
The phone company wanted to "Lease" my DSL modem to me too.
Fortunately I can do math and determine that purchasing the modem is better than leasing if I intend to use it for more than a year.
The posts that started this whole thread were along the lines of:
a) My tax dollars go to the government
b) Government funds research
c) Research produces software
The assertations of one group have been:
d) if BSD license, MS uses software, charges, and taxpayers pay twice.
The assertations of others (maybe just me) are:
d) if GPL license, MS pays twice (they pay taxes too). if BSD license, initial costs are lowered in everyone's software development.
I am glad that you developed software and are willing to share it and I can understand why you might still want control and the ability to make a buck, but when it is the communal tax dollars of individuals *AND* corporations that provide individuals with jobs, I think that the results of that research should be released in the MOST FREE form that is usable by ALL, individual and closed source corporate alike which currently is BSD.
Costs are irrelevant when setting the price for a software product
Okay, maybe I slept through economics, but it seems to me that the customers would be smart enough to change their willingness to pay.
X people will buy a product with Y features at price Z
(X-Delta) people will by the same product at price (Z+Markup).
If the cost to develop the software + safety margin is > X' * Z' (where Delta and Markup maximize profit), then they shouldn't develop it in the first place.
For some products, lower the price, the sales increase at a higher rate than the price was lowered, and you get more profit than you would at a higher price.
So, if I have a lemondade stand, I can choose to sell each glass for $20. In some situations, I might be able to sell a glass.
If I have a competitor across the street selling lemonade for $1 per glass, then I will never be able to sell a glass unless I lower my price.
If there is a lemon tree next door with a sign saying "Free Lemons", a percentage of the potential customers will make their own lemonade unless I drop my price to something more reasonable like $.10 or $.25
Corporate consumers of software are very good about doing this sort of analysis. For any organization large enough to develop the software on their own (and potentially even market it and compete against you), this type of analysis will be done. For any software that large organizations buy, the normal laws of economics do apply.
Software economics work fundamentally different than normal economics, get that through your head.
Please clarify - Are you saying that end-user software is different? Or in-house software?
Where is it proven (or even documented) that software economics are different than normal economics?
Sure, the per-unit costs are lower, but there are other industries where this is true - like music and book publishing.
It is a fine statement, I just don't think that it is that simple.
A company won't sell software for less than the cost unless they are stupid.
Price is always a factor in purchasing. In the multiple product marketplace, features is another, only a stupid company would raise their prices higher than their competitors to provide the same level of service and features.
What the market is willing to pay will change. It can change due to market saturuation, marketing, competition, etc. If the cost to enter the market drops enough and the profit margin is high enough, another competitor will enter with a much lower priced product and the price that the market is willing to pay will drop.
No, I'm actually arguing that Microsoft is creating and encouring the creation 3rd party vendors for accessibility tools, software testing tools, games, and a lot of other markets by creating APIs explicitly to help them.
Microsoft *is* aggressive, and maybe even a 1000lb gorilla, but it isn't out to take over the universe, just to solve the needs of customers. *really* It suprised me when I started talking to people working at Microsoft, but they do want to solve the needs of the customers.
In what naive world do you live?
Software companies will charge whatever the market will pay. It's irrelevant how much the software cost.
In a world where more than one software package is competing for a single market. This isn't Microsoft vs the rest of the world, this is "Streets and Trips vs other map sofware", "MS Money vs Quicken", "MSN vs AOL", even "MS office vs star office, KDE office, wordperfect/quatro, etc" and "Active Directory vs iPlanet and NDS"
Every technology produced by MS has one or more competitors...if research finds a better way to work and all competitors can use it, they will each implement it and reduce their costs. Maybe this means they have more money for other new features, that they will charge for, but it makes them more productive.
Any publicly traded company has an obligation to attempt to increase market share. This is done by adjusting price, features, support, and marketing to compete.
Why do we want the government to fund an alternative to Microsoft Operating Systems?
We turn over our prisons to corporations.
We have turned our universities into corporation-like profit focused enterprises.
We are talking about turning education over to corporations.
We frequenly turn sewage, water, and waste over to corporations.
We even let corporations like oil companies control critical infrastructure.
When government helps corporate profits, more people are employed, more taxes are paid, and more investments are made.
Despite the fact that many people think Microsoft is evil, they haven't taken thousands of steps that could have taken to put a stranglehold on users.
Microsoft has intentially left the accessibility tool (screen readers, speach tools, etc) market open, just providing APIs and allowing other companies to create products for this market.
Microsoft has also left the graphics software market open as opposed to creating a pagemaker or photoshop look-alike. Similar in the CAD market prior to Visio (and visio was more for the scriptability side than the CAD type tools). If you look around, Microsoft assists quite a few niche markets by providing APIs to help these markets while intentionally staying out of the market.
This is naive at best. Programmer time and effort is the smallest of Microsoft's major expenses. The Microsoft R&D budget is structured to cover the sort of marketing expenses required to 'develop' a commanding hold on the market. Microsoft is not going to fail to take an opportunity to lock out competitors because they'll save a few days of some programmer's time.
I would like to see the breakdown of Microsoft's budget that shows this because I pretty sure it isn't true.
BTW - R&D are two completely seperate sets of groups within MS. There is a Research division, and then there are product groups. Within the product groups there are Program Managers that specify features and talk with customers, developers that write the code, and testers. Marketing is a completely different group and they are so disconnected that the best they can do is come up with the "99.999% uptime" campaign instead of advertizing things like Active Directory.
I think that Linux users (and I still use linux on a few boxes at home) give Microsoft way too much credit in the marketing department.
Read "I sing the body electronic" by Fred Moody if you want to see how Microsoft really works.