But, if you have the complete source code for my product, that means you can turn around, rebuild it (perhaps with minor modifications), and resell it to recoup (and go beyond) the cost of the binary. That means, with very little effort and cost, you're now taking away my customers and making money from my work.
Only if you need four hundred mouse gestures or 400 key sequences to get your job done.
Remember that you could easily program (if you know "Lisp";-) an Emacs key sequence (and, thus, mouse gesture) to do pretty much anything you want. If you really need 400 separate "sequences" to do what you want (highly doubtful), you could always create a 401st to bring up a (set of) help screen(s) to remind you of the other 400. Also, remember that Emacs is "mode" based (C mode, C++ mode, Java mode, Text mode, etc.), so you could reuse "sequences" (and "gestures") in each mode and, thus, put "similar" commands in the different modes on the same "gesture".
How many "gestures" do you have to remember to use Palm's grafitti(sp?) effectively?
The word "introduce" gives a sense of possessiveness to the thing being introduced. That may be unintentional, but that's the way many people view the word.
Although it didn't get wide usage, Emacs used to have (still has?) a "mouse gestures" add-on that allows you to map any unique mouse gesture to a key-sequence (which Emacs can then map to pretty much any command -- including user defined ones).
Always meant to try it out, but never got around to it. Wonder if it's still around?
Using "introduced" as the word, although possibly correct in the sense you mention, gives a sense of possessiveness to the thing. So, although you didn't give birth to your friend Bill, you had all the access to Bill (from my perspective) until you introduced him to me.
Ah, but the record industry killed off Personics, too. See this Business 2.0 article [business2.com] for details. Basically, even though Personics was approved by the record labels--and some of them had even invested in it--they couldn't get licenses to use many good songs in their system. (And, in order to get the licenses, they had to incorporate lots of security measures, like strict inventory control to ensure employees didn't run off extra tapes after hours.) This lack of music really hurt Personics' business, especially repeat business. In the end, although Personics tried to "do the right thing," they suffered the same fate as Napster was to suffer nearly a decade later. The parallels are striking.
Hmmm. I hadn't taken into account how much the restriction on "recognized" music that the record labels could wield could hurt business.
If you only get new, unrestricted songs, then you'd have to advertise (radio, etc.) to get them recognized. That, in turn, raises the cost of doing business which, in turn, adds to the store's distribution fees which, in turn, cuts the royalties that artists could expect which, in turn, reduces their reason for switching to this approach.
It's been said that the artists are limited because of the distribution mechanisms. There are only 4 major distributors in the U.S. and they've got to compete for shelf space and the like. I would think that a Napster-like system could change this.
Consider, what if there was a chain of record shops (start with a small number and grow) that allowed customers to create their own CDs by pulling songs (along with lyrics and artist info and such) from a large (and continually growing) database of artist contributed music. For each song copied from the database, the artist(s) get a royalty cut and the record shop gets expenses (CD, jewel case, personal lyric book, personal artist info book, etc.) plus a small profit. This is similar to (if I remember correctly) the Personics model of "make your own tape".
Since distribution could be done via the Internet, the shipping and storage costs would be nearly eliminated. The stores would need to maintain a large computer system with lots of disk space (which is getting cheaper all the time) as well as have on hand a supply of blank CDs (or DVDs). Using a "least recently used" model, the store computer system could keep on hand the most requested titles and, thus, be able to pump out most CDs fairly quickly. The store would also need a high-quality (and speedy) printer to produce the artist info and lyric books to go with the CDs (ie. this is the "value add" over pure Internet distribution). When the store computer needs to get hold of a new song (or a very old song), it might go out on the Internet to the artists web-site to download it (a central site controlled by the artists could list all new available songs and where to get them).
Basically, I think an expansion on this would be a way to leverage a new distribution model into the picture. The artists should be able to get a higher royalty from this model because much of the costs have been replaced by the Internet. Would it work?
Think cost/benefit. If the cost of the licensing fee for W2K outweighs the costs of switching to Linux, then there is a benefit in switching. Often, that choice is made by the bean counters.
An alternative approach is to automatically ask any unrecognized email addresses if they belong to a real person. TMDA does this for all non-whitelisted email addresses. The idea is that spammers do not put real email addresses on their spam, so will not be able to respond to a request for authentication. If the emailer doesn't respond to the authentication request, then TMDA blacklists the address for the future. Result -- no spam.
Besides, money is part of the problem here anyway. If my tax dollars aren't going to Microsoft then that's that much less money they'll have to spend on FUD or buying off the Justice Dept. on their next anti-trust suit.
Well, this isn't a communistic sentiment, but it's certain anti-free trade.
This is called "competitive bidding" and the government should be doing this already. If the company pushing the open source product is discriminated against, then they can take them to court for recompense.
BTW, don't forget to factor in the cost of support for either the free or commercial product. If the competition is between a company pushing a commercial product and a free piece of software that would have to be totally supported by the government, it may be cheaper in the long run for the government to go with the commercial product.
Nobody's arguing that the government shouldn't use open source software, just that it shouldn't be required to use open source software. The government is supposed to do competitive bidding for most of the projects that it undertakes. If open source companies can come in and show how their software is just as good as the proprietary equivalent and far cheaper, then they should win the contract hands down. If the government doesn't do a proper competitive bid when it should, then the injured open-source companies can take them to court. It's as simple as that.
The Army mechanics can only fix the pieces that they've been trained to fix. If one of the base internal systems has a problem, they'll replace the system rather than tear it apart.
The point is that even the government has to deal with the real world. Some things they buy "off the shelf" (like Microsoft software) because it works for what they need. That is how they can save money.
You don't want them to always spends $500 on a hammer, do you?
I said it before, I'll say it again - absolutely nobody is listening to the musicians.
Even if they can't take their old music with them, what stops them from setting up a new distribution system for their music and, therefore, bypassing the RIAA?
Problem is that most (all?) SPAM is not coming from the person it appears to be coming from, so sending it "back" to that person is really just perpetuating the SPAM rather than wasting his bandwidth.
There is TMDA. It is not well-developed yet for ISP usage, but I could see it being hooked into an email server and automatically filtering out email going to an address that is out-of-date. If everyone then used TMDA, the ISPs could then proactively filter large amounts of email they relay pretty easily as they are already reading the email address.
The point is that, if you block the SPAM at your system, then the SPAM has already contributed to bandwidth wastage. Finding a way to push the block back to the SPAMmer might go a long way to eliminating SPAM. Who would send SPAM if it doesn't get out to anyone? Thus far, no one seems to have a reliable way of doing this that wouldn't also catch some legitimate email.
One possibility seems to be TMDA. With people using TMDA for email addresses, ISPs could easily filter email sent to out-of-date or dead email addresses. If everyone were using these addresses, then most SPAM would die pretty quickly. I imagine it could be possible to setup a central server that TMDA could send some user-specific rules to and ISPs could scan to improve the filtering process.
Even a "lowly" VP at ExxonMobil in Houston has over 3,000 square feet of private office/meeting/washroom space... almost as much space as an average size house!
Hrmph! That's almost twice the size of the average Silicon Valley home...
There are a ton of free software projects on the Internet that have been developed by people all over the world who never met each other face to face. Imagine how much stuff they'd put out if it was their job as well as their hobby.
Don't count on that. They still have more money and time to throw at the problem. My guess is that they will do so, at whatever level it takes. They are a big part of the US economy, so I would guess there will be some sort of political pressure through treaties or something.
AND the music industry will pick up the support of the book industry, the video industry, the movie industry, the radio industry, the television industry, and the software industry -- all of whom are trying to sell copyrighted material that Napster wanted to give away (P2P doesn't just trade music).
Slashdot Mirror
But, if you have the complete source code for my product, that means you can turn around, rebuild it (perhaps with minor modifications), and resell it to recoup (and go beyond) the cost of the binary. That means, with very little effort and cost, you're now taking away my customers and making money from my work.
Come clean! How many years of computer using or programming experience have you had? Do you work as a computer programmer somewhere?
Better yet, why not hang a big billboard off the bottom of the station and rent advertising space to corporations? :-)
For being such A. Coward, you've got to learn to smile when you say such things... ;-)
Only if you need four hundred mouse gestures or 400 key sequences to get your job done.
;-) an Emacs key sequence (and, thus, mouse gesture) to do pretty much anything you want. If you really need 400 separate "sequences" to do what you want (highly doubtful), you could always create a 401st to bring up a (set of) help screen(s) to remind you of the other 400. Also, remember that Emacs is "mode" based (C mode, C++ mode, Java mode, Text mode, etc.), so you could reuse "sequences" (and "gestures") in each mode and, thus, put "similar" commands in the different modes on the same "gesture".
Remember that you could easily program (if you know "Lisp"
How many "gestures" do you have to remember to use Palm's grafitti(sp?) effectively?
A better word would've been "popularize".
The word "introduce" gives a sense of possessiveness to the thing being introduced. That may be unintentional, but that's the way many people view the word.
Although it didn't get wide usage, Emacs used to have (still has?) a "mouse gestures" add-on that allows you to map any unique mouse gesture to a key-sequence (which Emacs can then map to pretty much any command -- including user defined ones).
Always meant to try it out, but never got around to it. Wonder if it's still around?
The word should be "popularized".
Using "introduced" as the word, although possibly correct in the sense you mention, gives a sense of possessiveness to the thing. So, although you didn't give birth to your friend Bill, you had all the access to Bill (from my perspective) until you introduced him to me.
Other than the "gift" approach, do you know of such a system? Particularly one that will not breakdown into "no gift" over time?
Hmmm. I hadn't taken into account how much the restriction on "recognized" music that the record labels could wield could hurt business.
If you only get new, unrestricted songs, then you'd have to advertise (radio, etc.) to get them recognized. That, in turn, raises the cost of doing business which, in turn, adds to the store's distribution fees which, in turn, cuts the royalties that artists could expect which, in turn, reduces their reason for switching to this approach.
*blech*
It's been said that the artists are limited because of the distribution mechanisms. There are only 4 major distributors in the U.S. and they've got to compete for shelf space and the like. I would think that a Napster-like system could change this.
Consider, what if there was a chain of record shops (start with a small number and grow) that allowed customers to create their own CDs by pulling songs (along with lyrics and artist info and such) from a large (and continually growing) database of artist contributed music. For each song copied from the database, the artist(s) get a royalty cut and the record shop gets expenses (CD, jewel case, personal lyric book, personal artist info book, etc.) plus a small profit. This is similar to (if I remember correctly) the Personics model of "make your own tape".
Since distribution could be done via the Internet, the shipping and storage costs would be nearly eliminated. The stores would need to maintain a large computer system with lots of disk space (which is getting cheaper all the time) as well as have on hand a supply of blank CDs (or DVDs). Using a "least recently used" model, the store computer system could keep on hand the most requested titles and, thus, be able to pump out most CDs fairly quickly. The store would also need a high-quality (and speedy) printer to produce the artist info and lyric books to go with the CDs (ie. this is the "value add" over pure Internet distribution). When the store computer needs to get hold of a new song (or a very old song), it might go out on the Internet to the artists web-site to download it (a central site controlled by the artists could list all new available songs and where to get them).
Basically, I think an expansion on this would be a way to leverage a new distribution model into the picture. The artists should be able to get a higher royalty from this model because much of the costs have been replaced by the Internet. Would it work?
Think cost/benefit. If the cost of the licensing fee for W2K outweighs the costs of switching to Linux, then there is a benefit in switching. Often, that choice is made by the bean counters.
An alternative approach is to automatically ask any unrecognized email addresses if they belong to a real person. TMDA does this for all non-whitelisted email addresses. The idea is that spammers do not put real email addresses on their spam, so will not be able to respond to a request for authentication. If the emailer doesn't respond to the authentication request, then TMDA blacklists the address for the future. Result -- no spam.
Well, this isn't a communistic sentiment, but it's certain anti-free trade.
This is called "competitive bidding" and the government should be doing this already. If the company pushing the open source product is discriminated against, then they can take them to court for recompense.
BTW, don't forget to factor in the cost of support for either the free or commercial product. If the competition is between a company pushing a commercial product and a free piece of software that would have to be totally supported by the government, it may be cheaper in the long run for the government to go with the commercial product.
Nobody's arguing that the government shouldn't use open source software, just that it shouldn't be required to use open source software. The government is supposed to do competitive bidding for most of the projects that it undertakes. If open source companies can come in and show how their software is just as good as the proprietary equivalent and far cheaper, then they should win the contract hands down. If the government doesn't do a proper competitive bid when it should, then the injured open-source companies can take them to court. It's as simple as that.
And your point is??
The Army mechanics can only fix the pieces that they've been trained to fix. If one of the base internal systems has a problem, they'll replace the system rather than tear it apart.
The point is that even the government has to deal with the real world. Some things they buy "off the shelf" (like Microsoft software) because it works for what they need. That is how they can save money.
You don't want them to always spends $500 on a hammer, do you?
Problem is that most (all?) SPAM is not coming from the person it appears to be coming from, so sending it "back" to that person is really just perpetuating the SPAM rather than wasting his bandwidth.
There is TMDA. It is not well-developed yet for ISP usage, but I could see it being hooked into an email server and automatically filtering out email going to an address that is out-of-date. If everyone then used TMDA, the ISPs could then proactively filter large amounts of email they relay pretty easily as they are already reading the email address.
Your flying car is at Moller.
8-)
The point is that, if you block the SPAM at your system, then the SPAM has already contributed to bandwidth wastage. Finding a way to push the block back to the SPAMmer might go a long way to eliminating SPAM. Who would send SPAM if it doesn't get out to anyone? Thus far, no one seems to have a reliable way of doing this that wouldn't also catch some legitimate email.
One possibility seems to be TMDA. With people using TMDA for email addresses, ISPs could easily filter email sent to out-of-date or dead email addresses. If everyone were using these addresses, then most SPAM would die pretty quickly. I imagine it could be possible to setup a central server that TMDA could send some user-specific rules to and ISPs could scan to improve the filtering process.
Hrmph! That's almost twice the size of the average Silicon Valley home...
There are a ton of free software projects on the Internet that have been developed by people all over the world who never met each other face to face. Imagine how much stuff they'd put out if it was their job as well as their hobby.
AND the music industry will pick up the support of the book industry, the video industry, the movie industry, the radio industry, the television industry, and the software industry -- all of whom are trying to sell copyrighted material that Napster wanted to give away (P2P doesn't just trade music).