You've got part of the answer in your post. It's a bid. Someone's actually got to bid on it. So this means first you have to know of the bid, then you have to want to do it. Government contracts are typically so laden with paperwork and requirements that most contractors try to stay away from them, or come waltzing in at the last moment knowing that noone else is going to show up due to the paperwork/headaches involved.
I would like to think that your typical linux solution provider isn't going to want to do much work for the government anyway as soon as they get the hefty binder from the government full of specs.
Granted, if you can put up with the bureaucracy nightmares that accompany such a project, you could probably make a pretty penny, but i'd personally steer far away from any such thing.
According to the story posted in the header of this article:
Smedley said that he plans to ask eBay to pull the game items off its site. eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said eBay would likely agree to do so. eBay has a policy of removing items for sale that are identified as intellectual property that is being unlawfully sold.
In addition, Ticketmaster contended that deep linking interfered with its economic relationships with advertisers, who paid handsomely to advertise on the site's home page. Finally, the company said that Tickets.com was guilty of "passing off" and "reverse passing off" -- forms of unfair competition -- because consumers might confusingly conclude that Ticketmaster and Tickets.com were connected in ways detrimental to Ticketmaster and beneficial to Tickets.com
This paragraph of the article seems to me somewhat like the software industry's claims of damages resulting from piracy. Given that certain people would never have purchased a product due to various factors, simply downloading a pirated version doesn't really cost them any money.
I understand that ads generate revenue and that ticketmaster would be upset by people bypassing ads. However, the "offending" deep linking still takes the user to a page containing a banner, and ticketmaster will still receive a service charge, so what are they complaining about? Perhaps they never would have made that sale had the user not gone through the site doing the deep linking.
When commercial industries realize there's money to be made, the pace and development of the technologies will rise. More companies will spring up to compete with eachother, resulting in lower prices, higher demand. All we need is an incentive for industry to get rolling on this. I think Robert Anton Wilson gave a good example of this in Schroedinger's Cat or the Illuminatus! Trilogy, can't remember which one offhand.
This sounds great. The only problem is that not everyone has the bandwidth to download a few hundred megs. If they really wanted to keep track of how many people are using the software, it wouldn't be difficult to send an electronic registration letting them know what OS it's running on. I'm sure that the linux folk would not mind taking the extra few minutes to let the game send the OS it's running on.
I purchase quite a bit of software and hardware, and usually end up forgetting to send in a paper registration card, but fill out electronic ones almost 100% of the time. An automated one-time packet sent to them with an OS name would be perfect for the situation. Granted of course, that they let the user be the one doing the sending.
It makes sense to me. I'm sure there's not much market research out there to show how well linux games sell, because there simply are nowhere near as many commercial games available as there are for other platforms. It stands to reason then that a firm would take a more conservative approach to a market in which there isn't the sort of data that will show them that they will indeed make money.
I will buy the Mac version as soon as it's available, and will ALSO buy the Linux version. If sales for the Linux port are much lower than anticipated because everyone's already bought the PC or Mac version, this company and others will surely take that as a hint to stop developing for Linux. The only way to get your voice heard is to let them know you WILL buy the game, and then actually go out and buy it when it gets released.
Software piracy on IRC is nothing new. I'm surprised it's taken them this long to start going after it. I don't think it'll be easy for them to go after the people who do it privately, or in +i channels.
However, if someone did "infiltrate" a channel, it would probably be rather simple for them to get more information on the people doing the transferring.
The problem with public offers is that anyone can see your ip, and easily contact your provider to get the account cut off. But there are an abundance of shell providers out there, so I don't see how they'll make even a small dent in the issue.
From what I've seen, there's a greater abundance of software on IRC freely available to the public, in public offers, than there is on most public FTP and Hotline sites.
Regardless, if this gains publicity and a few people go down, it'll get a little quieter and people won't send others software without being a bit more cautious. It's easy to say "no" to someone who comes in asking where all the "warez" are.
Point well taken, however, there won't ever be MSHBO, HBO is owned by Time Warner, who owns CNN, who undoubtedly would never give MS the gratification.:>
Whether we like it or not, a company is in business to make money. Their business practices may be far from ethical, and while this causes me to get rather pissy, there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it but boycott their services. The fact that the government has essentially given their approval of this monopoly for so long is what disturbs me the most. Although I think we do need some sort of order in domain-registrations, there's no need for it to be handled by ONE entity. Bah.
Slashdot Mirror
This makes no sense either.
merged should be replaced by "was bought buy", not "bought".
You've got part of the answer in your post. It's a bid. Someone's actually got to bid on it. So this means first you have to know of the bid, then you have to want to do it. Government contracts are typically so laden with paperwork and requirements that most contractors try to stay away from them, or come waltzing in at the last moment knowing that noone else is going to show up due to the paperwork/headaches involved.
I would like to think that your typical linux solution provider isn't going to want to do much work for the government anyway as soon as they get the hefty binder from the government full of specs.
Granted, if you can put up with the bureaucracy nightmares that accompany such a project, you could probably make a pretty penny, but i'd personally steer far away from any such thing.
According to the story posted in the header of this article:
Smedley said that he plans to ask eBay to pull the game items off its site. eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said eBay would likely agree to do so. eBay has a policy of removing items for sale that are identified as intellectual property that is being unlawfully sold.
In addition, Ticketmaster contended that deep linking interfered with its economic relationships with advertisers, who paid handsomely to advertise on the site's home page. Finally, the company said that Tickets.com was guilty of "passing off" and "reverse passing off" -- forms of unfair competition -- because consumers might confusingly conclude that Ticketmaster and Tickets.com were connected in ways detrimental to Ticketmaster and beneficial to Tickets.com
This paragraph of the article seems to me somewhat like the software industry's claims of damages resulting from piracy. Given that certain people would never have purchased a product due to various factors, simply downloading a pirated version doesn't really cost them any money.
I understand that ads generate revenue and that ticketmaster would be upset by people bypassing ads. However, the "offending" deep linking still takes the user to a page containing a banner, and ticketmaster will still receive a service charge, so what are they complaining about? Perhaps they never would have made that sale had the user not gone through the site doing the deep linking.
Just a thought...
Here are a few of the programs:
Macster
Rapster
There are a few more but I can't think of them at the moment.
The only thing the Chinese government could do that would surprise me, is to admit they're wrong.
Given their history, nothing's shocking.
When commercial industries realize there's money to be made, the pace and development of the technologies will rise. More companies will spring up to compete with eachother, resulting in lower prices, higher demand. All we need is an incentive for industry to get rolling on this. I think Robert Anton Wilson gave a good example of this in Schroedinger's Cat or the Illuminatus! Trilogy, can't remember which one offhand.
The computer the mice built can't handle all odd numbers, so we're going to explode. Where'd I put that electronic thumb???
I stand corrected.
This sounds great. The only problem is that not everyone has the bandwidth to download a few hundred megs. If they really wanted to keep track of how many people are using the software, it wouldn't be difficult to send an electronic registration letting them know what OS it's running on. I'm sure that the linux folk would not mind taking the extra few minutes to let the game send the OS it's running on.
I purchase quite a bit of software and hardware, and usually end up forgetting to send in a paper registration card, but fill out electronic ones almost 100% of the time. An automated one-time packet sent to them with an OS name would be perfect for the situation. Granted of course, that they let the user be the one doing the sending.
Pahroza
It makes sense to me. I'm sure there's not much market research out there to show how well linux games sell, because there simply are nowhere near as many commercial games available as there are for other platforms. It stands to reason then that a firm would take a more conservative approach to a market in which there isn't the sort of data that will show them that they will indeed make money.
I will buy the Mac version as soon as it's available, and will ALSO buy the Linux version. If sales for the Linux port are much lower than anticipated because everyone's already bought the PC or Mac version, this company and others will surely take that as a hint to stop developing for Linux. The only way to get your voice heard is to let them know you WILL buy the game, and then actually go out and buy it when it gets released.
-Pahroza
With the text on his page as the lyrics. It can be found here: http://artists.mp3s.com/artists /63/mahir_cagri.html
Software piracy on IRC is nothing new. I'm surprised it's taken them this long to start going after it. I don't think it'll be easy for them to go after the people who do it privately, or in +i channels.
However, if someone did "infiltrate" a channel, it would probably be rather simple for them to get more information on the people doing the transferring.
The problem with public offers is that anyone can see your ip, and easily contact your provider to get the account cut off. But there are an abundance of shell providers out there, so I don't see how they'll make even a small dent in the issue.
From what I've seen, there's a greater abundance of software on IRC freely available to the public, in public offers, than there is on most public FTP and Hotline sites.
Regardless, if this gains publicity and a few people go down, it'll get a little quieter and people won't send others software without being a bit more cautious. It's easy to say "no" to someone who comes in asking where all the "warez" are.
Point well taken, however, there won't ever be MSHBO, HBO is owned by Time Warner, who owns CNN, who undoubtedly would never give MS the gratification. :>
Yeah yeah, semantics.
Whether we like it or not, a company is in business to make money. Their business practices may be far from ethical, and while this causes me to get rather pissy, there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it but boycott their services. The fact that the government has essentially given their approval of this monopoly for so long is what disturbs me the most. Although I think we do need some sort of order in domain-registrations, there's no need for it to be handled by ONE entity. Bah.