Over here, the carriers have tried to do the same thing:
1. Telco pays handset distributor to 'kit' (lock) phone. Going rate is $20/unit. The idea being to subsidize the anonymous prepaid subscriptions that are the norm here.
2. Distributor sells to another distributor for cost less kitting fee plus some profit.
3. New distributor unlocks phone and sells to Indonesia or Malaysia, where a new distributor often repeats the process.
So each carrier likely subsideses each phone more than once. Someday they will realize that relying on subsidy and non-circumvention doesn't work in the third world...
Here in the Philippines, as elsewhere, WAP has been a total failure. SMS (short message service) however, has taken off like a rocket - the average user sends 20 of them a day.
Companies have been integrating SMS into their offerings. For example, you can vote, bid, register, etc. all by sending a certain message to a certain number.
The downside, though, is you have to advertise whatever service you offer and how to interact with it in the newspapers.
Otherwise, though, it keeps things cheap and simple, and builds on something people are already doing. On phones here at least, command line (SMS) seems to be favored by the general public over GUI (WAP).
I am thinking of a project that would be available to users over the web. Most of the stuff I need is BSD anyway, but there are some pieces of GPL'ed code that would be useful. Since I plan to sell the service 'produced' by the code, and not the code itself, would I have to make the code freely available to anyone who asked for it, as in 'click here to download source', or can I keep it to myself until I make available the program/binary itself (where the GPL license is clear about including source)?
IMHO this question is an important one for the GPL in general, what with the move towards 'web services',.net and all...
Also, am I right in that unless explicitly stated, code released under BSD can be re-released under GPL, but not vice-versa?
Any help would be greatly appreciated by this newbie.
On the other hand, most likely the companies in question actually WANT to sell it off because thats less money they'll have to come up with later to cover the debts after bankrupcy if any.
You misunderstand the concept of bankruptcy. A corporation declares bankruptcy because it no longer has enough assets to cover its liabilities. The bankruptcy courts then step in to distribute what remains of the assets among creditors. The stockholders of the corporation are under no obligation to put in more of their own assets to cover the shortfall - the concept of limited liability (tho IANAL).
Therefore, it's no skin off the bankrupt corps' nose for a judge to declare a controversial asset like a customer database untransferable. It simply means creditors will get that much less.
First off, let me state that I believe Motorola is morally wrong in using such heavy handed tactics to obtain customer information. Privacy, dealer circumvention, etc. are definite concerns. However, if properly applied, this could be made to work out for all. Motorola, after all, needs to know how their products are used, and what profile a typical user might have, in order not just to market the products, but to develop new ones, refine existing products, etc. This can be done by no other than the manufacturer of the product - the dealer doesn't make stuff, nor is he likely to possess the resources to effectively mine the data.
So passing on data to Motorola could in fact (as they claim) benefit all involved - the customer would have products better suited to his needs, the dealer with better products to sell and a clearer idea of who to sell them to, and Motorola making stuff that it knows people will buy. Still, how to address privacy and direct internet sales?
Simple. To better understand customers, Motorola needn't know their names. It should be content with unique pseudonyms known only to the dealer and the customer. They then suggest products to the dealer for particular pseudonyms, and the dealer takes these to the requisite customer. A re-intermediation of sorts, if you will.
Of course, this still leaves us with the problem of matching up the psudonym with say, D&B data, but that is another matter entirely...
If you think the 'digital divide' is an issue now, wait till the rich can not only better educate their kids, but buy them better genes as well. Permanently stratified society.
Just because we fear that man's dark side will get the better of him doesn't mean we should stop research. We just have to believe that we'll be ready to use that knowledge wisely when we do get it.
...or perhaps more appropriately, making salt from seawater, without license from (or was it in defiance of the monopoly of?) your British colonial masters...
Better yet the Vx, which features rechargeable Li Ion batteries. This makes for a much slimmer profile - truly pocket friendly, the way a PDA should be.
This assumes that napster users would rather (to use the ebay analogy) 'sell'(have songs downloaded off your HD), rather than 'buy' (download songs from others' HDs). Who would want all their bandwidth tied up by download requests from others, which good manners inhibits them from declining? Kind of like making it to a list of the 100 richest people in the world, and having to fend off persistent solicitations.
"A village may only have one with someone who can use it. But that one is a resource for the whole village" Having grown up comfortably in the Philippines, I have long wondered why the less affluent behaved so differently from the more westernized upper classes. And I think I've figured at least part of it out. They do not take something as truth until someone they trust says it is - i.e. they don't like reading something directly from the source and deciding for themselves. It sounds ignorant and hopeless, until you realize everyone does it to some degree, depending on their grasp of the subject matter. As people who have not had access to decent libraries go online, I believe they will use the internet differently. For example, farmers will not check crop prices and research new agricultural methods on their own; rather, they will get the information off someone they trust, who will in turn get the information off the net. This insulates them from being fooled by scams and disinformation, as their trusted expert (likely a respected farmer himself) would do this for a living and become familiar with the pitfalls, and perhaps even contribute to the body of knowledge he was drawing from. Not too different from the way things work today, except the "expert" is often an outsider paid by a grant from the World Bank and beholden to their (often misguided) policies.
I live in Manila, and am at the older end of the so-called 'generation text'. In addition to the reasons mentioned in the article, texting has taken off because it's unobtrusive. When you call someone on his cell phone, you worry about interrupting him - with text he can reply at his leisure. Given the number of dead spots around the city, it also makes it much more likely you'll get through. Text is really more instant messaging than chat, because you have to know the number of the person you're exchanging messages with. Filipinos don't care much for anonymous conversation, which brings me to my next point... Another reason for it's popularity is it always makes one feel connected. Pinoys (as we like to call ourselves), more than other cultures I have known, value their friends, and are proud of them. Sending and receiving messages in public is subtle bragging about how many friends you have, although the irony of conversing by SMS when your other friends are in front of you is unfortunately lost on many - hopefully this is just a novelty effect. Another related phenomenon and of interest to/. users is the popularity of prepaid cards, which allow anonymity - all you need to do is buy a new sim card (a chip-based card that slides into your phone), and you've got a new number/identity. Not even the telco, let alone the government, can listen in/track you. Despite costing twice as much as a postpaid line per minute, prepaid makes up at least 75% of all cellphone users, and growing (granted, the difficulty of getting credit for a postpaid line is also a factor). We are very privacy-conscious, perhaps due to abuses dating back to the Spanish, Japanese, and American colonizers, and as recent as the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. We resisted a national ID system, rightly fearing that the government would abuse it, and laugh at Singapore, where a passport is needed to buy a sim card. Many people don't have bank accounts because they don't trust the banks. Watching the privacy issue unfold over the Net, I wonder whether our experience might have something to contribute. What we have is essentially a system where your identity is tied to your number, but only those you choose to reveal it to can make the connection. When you tire of your number and all that is associated with it, you simply get a new one, realizing of course you lose the benefits along with the liabilities. It will be an interesting experiment, because it is likely that B2C will happen over the cellular phone here, prepaid cards will be e-cash, and sim cards will be identities.
Slashdot Mirror
Over here, the carriers have tried to do the same thing:
1. Telco pays handset distributor to 'kit' (lock) phone. Going rate is $20/unit. The idea being to subsidize the anonymous prepaid subscriptions that are the norm here.
2. Distributor sells to another distributor for cost less kitting fee plus some profit.
3. New distributor unlocks phone and sells to Indonesia or Malaysia, where a new distributor often repeats the process.
So each carrier likely subsideses each phone more than once. Someday they will realize that relying on subsidy and non-circumvention doesn't work in the third world...
Here in the Philippines, as elsewhere, WAP has been a total failure. SMS (short message service) however, has taken off like a rocket - the average user sends 20 of them a day.
Companies have been integrating SMS into their offerings. For example, you can vote, bid, register, etc. all by sending a certain message to a certain number.
The downside, though, is you have to advertise whatever service you offer and how to interact with it in the newspapers.
Otherwise, though, it keeps things cheap and simple, and builds on something people are already doing. On phones here at least, command line (SMS) seems to be favored by the general public over GUI (WAP).
I am thinking of a project that would be available to users over the web. Most of the stuff I need is BSD anyway, but there are some pieces of GPL'ed code that would be useful. Since I plan to sell the service 'produced' by the code, and not the code itself, would I have to make the code freely available to anyone who asked for it, as in 'click here to download source', or can I keep it to myself until I make available the program/binary itself (where the GPL license is clear about including source)?
.net and all...
IMHO this question is an important one for the GPL in general, what with the move towards 'web services',
Also, am I right in that unless explicitly stated, code released under BSD can be re-released under GPL, but not vice-versa?
Any help would be greatly appreciated by this newbie.
You misunderstand the concept of bankruptcy. A corporation declares bankruptcy because it no longer has enough assets to cover its liabilities. The bankruptcy courts then step in to distribute what remains of the assets among creditors. The stockholders of the corporation are under no obligation to put in more of their own assets to cover the shortfall - the concept of limited liability (tho IANAL).
Therefore, it's no skin off the bankrupt corps' nose for a judge to declare a controversial asset like a customer database untransferable. It simply means creditors will get that much less.
First off, let me state that I believe Motorola is morally wrong in using such heavy handed tactics to obtain customer information. Privacy, dealer circumvention, etc. are definite concerns. However, if properly applied, this could be made to work out for all. Motorola, after all, needs to know how their products are used, and what profile a typical user might have, in order not just to market the products, but to develop new ones, refine existing products, etc. This can be done by no other than the manufacturer of the product - the dealer doesn't make stuff, nor is he likely to possess the resources to effectively mine the data.
So passing on data to Motorola could in fact (as they claim) benefit all involved - the customer would have products better suited to his needs, the dealer with better products to sell and a clearer idea of who to sell them to, and Motorola making stuff that it knows people will buy. Still, how to address privacy and direct internet sales?
Simple. To better understand customers, Motorola needn't know their names. It should be content with unique pseudonyms known only to the dealer and the customer. They then suggest products to the dealer for particular pseudonyms, and the dealer takes these to the requisite customer. A re-intermediation of sorts, if you will.
Of course, this still leaves us with the problem of matching up the psudonym with say, D&B data, but that is another matter entirely...
If you think the 'digital divide' is an issue now, wait till the rich can not only better educate their kids, but buy them better genes as well. Permanently stratified society.
Just because we fear that man's dark side will get the better of him doesn't mean we should stop research. We just have to believe that we'll be ready to use that knowledge wisely when we do get it.
...or perhaps more appropriately, making salt from seawater, without license from (or was it in defiance of the monopoly of?) your British colonial masters...
As the adage goes, say nothing but good about the dead...
Better yet the Vx, which features rechargeable Li Ion batteries. This makes for a much slimmer profile - truly pocket friendly, the way a PDA should be.
This assumes that napster users would rather (to use the ebay analogy) 'sell'(have songs downloaded off your HD), rather than 'buy' (download songs from others' HDs). Who would want all their bandwidth tied up by download requests from others, which good manners inhibits them from declining? Kind of like making it to a list of the 100 richest people in the world, and having to fend off persistent solicitations.
By legalizing drugs or publications about them, you coercively make a choice for all citizens about what is "right" for them.
More like: By legalizing drugs or publications about them, you LEAVE IT TO THE INDIVIDUAL to make a choice about what is "right" for them.
"A village may only have one with someone who can use it. But that one is a resource for the whole village" Having grown up comfortably in the Philippines, I have long wondered why the less affluent behaved so differently from the more westernized upper classes. And I think I've figured at least part of it out. They do not take something as truth until someone they trust says it is - i.e. they don't like reading something directly from the source and deciding for themselves. It sounds ignorant and hopeless, until you realize everyone does it to some degree, depending on their grasp of the subject matter. As people who have not had access to decent libraries go online, I believe they will use the internet differently. For example, farmers will not check crop prices and research new agricultural methods on their own; rather, they will get the information off someone they trust, who will in turn get the information off the net. This insulates them from being fooled by scams and disinformation, as their trusted expert (likely a respected farmer himself) would do this for a living and become familiar with the pitfalls, and perhaps even contribute to the body of knowledge he was drawing from. Not too different from the way things work today, except the "expert" is often an outsider paid by a grant from the World Bank and beholden to their (often misguided) policies.
I live in Manila, and am at the older end of the so-called 'generation text'. In addition to the reasons mentioned in the article, texting has taken off because it's unobtrusive. When you call someone on his cell phone, you worry about interrupting him - with text he can reply at his leisure. Given the number of dead spots around the city, it also makes it much more likely you'll get through. Text is really more instant messaging than chat, because you have to know the number of the person you're exchanging messages with. Filipinos don't care much for anonymous conversation, which brings me to my next point... Another reason for it's popularity is it always makes one feel connected. Pinoys (as we like to call ourselves), more than other cultures I have known, value their friends, and are proud of them. Sending and receiving messages in public is subtle bragging about how many friends you have, although the irony of conversing by SMS when your other friends are in front of you is unfortunately lost on many - hopefully this is just a novelty effect. Another related phenomenon and of interest to /. users is the popularity of prepaid cards, which allow anonymity - all you need to do is buy a new sim card (a chip-based card that slides into your phone), and you've got a new number/identity. Not even the telco, let alone the government, can listen in/track you. Despite costing twice as much as a postpaid line per minute, prepaid makes up at least 75% of all cellphone users, and growing (granted, the difficulty of getting credit for a postpaid line is also a factor). We are very privacy-conscious, perhaps due to abuses dating back to the Spanish, Japanese, and American colonizers, and as recent as the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. We resisted a national ID system, rightly fearing that the government would abuse it, and laugh at Singapore, where a passport is needed to buy a sim card. Many people don't have bank accounts because they don't trust the banks. Watching the privacy issue unfold over the Net, I wonder whether our experience might have something to contribute. What we have is essentially a system where your identity is tied to your number, but only those you choose to reveal it to can make the connection. When you tire of your number and all that is associated with it, you simply get a new one, realizing of course you lose the benefits along with the liabilities. It will be an interesting experiment, because it is likely that B2C will happen over the cellular phone here, prepaid cards will be e-cash, and sim cards will be identities.