You have some very strong opinions which seem to be a bit of a love hate things with Apple and Steve, and so forth.
I think the net result is Apple is embracing commodity hardware. They have done that with USB, IDE, PCI, etc. and done well with it. Steve killed off the clones (which I thought was a bad move) but he still needs more market share and this is a way to do it without clones. The real question is will there be a reference design and have them basically get out of the hardware business?
There was always the thought they did UI better than others, but they have had lots of bad market timing (can you say "Newton!). With the Ipod they hit the MP3 player market not with the 1st wave but with the 2nd or 3rd and hit it right, although too much $$ for me personally...
Now they have a name that's "KEWL" and Hip and so forth... and we have a generation that has grown up with PCs. For them (like some of us but NOT our PEERS) PCs so they are NOT some scary "thing"; SO... MS can FUD FUD FUD all they want and kids know it's just some software and hardware... nothing really worthy of the FUD.
You say the Premium will not dip more than $100; if that's the case it will still increase market share, as I'm sure every $100 drop in price equates to a few % penetration.
I'm guessing that a APPLE sells for 10% more than a similarly configured DELL; and that it will equal more than a $100 drop in price. What remains is will there be any "custom" hardware (e.g., perhaps only the single button mouse!).
This certainly is a big switch and it does seem sweeping, but you write:
> decisions that affect the userbase
I'm really not sure how this impacts the user base
The you write:
> I don't particularly want to see all my expensive Apple hardware depreciate spectacularly
So the real issue is $$$, but all computers depreciate and while Apples do tend to hold value longers, most computer owners hold on to and use computers long past the time that retain any real value.
Do you really expect to sell your new computer before it's worth very little? or do you just like the IDEA that it hold it's value longer?
Do you only buy top end cars that also hold their value and increase while most cars decrease?
5) The PPC might be good technically but there just isn't enough base to keep it going and keep it affordable. Running one of the world's best OS on what amounts to a private label chip isn't a good idea.
6) All this assumes Mac/OS runs on off the shelf Intel chips and not something custom made or funky..
We need open source at the CHIP level and to develop hard ware level "trust" scheme (hardware, software, firmware, blah blah blah) that are open source.
And yes, it's not about them trusting us, its about us (not trusting THEM) and us controling every bit of code that's running, and then getting to a baseline and not allowing ANY new code without our permission..
One good thing might be to allow new code install only when NOT network connected..
I think you have a good thought there.. and either way, than play off any Intel compatible chip producer. What would be interesting if AMD/IBM can do some special engineering at the chip level that would a) not raise the price and b) give them some advantage
Given that, perhaps, some day robots will share very close and very trusted relationships with human; e.g., give "freedom" of movement in their homes, offices, cars, etc. and perhaps given some spending authority, passwords, and other means to access resources on behave of the home/office they toil in... having their source and design as open source is a fairly critical to insure (on the macro level) that particular classes of robots don't contain lurking evil.
However, IMHO, it will take some type of trusted computer system (open sourced I hope!! please! Please!!), to insure that an individual robot isn't lurking in your home with evil within its programming...
[I've been trying to get my homeBot to clean up the kitchen but those damm spybots and Trojan Virus have it wacked out going around in small circles in the bathroom (and have had it lock itself in!; glad we have more than one bathroom...]
sure #'s lie and bigger isn't always better.. Iraq did have some hard core troops.. Nothing that could withstand US air power.. it wasn't like we battled it out in the trenches (ala' WWI).
But NK has access to top Soviet and Chinese Technology and a spy network that could bring them any needed US technology (or that from Japan).
Since the "internet" or Internet Protocol didn't "turn on until 1983" even the US didn't have a "single" internet connection in 1981.. hmmmmm and yet here we are!
ARPAnet dates from the late 60's and forgetting Babbages' failures, there have been industrial uses for computers from the last 40's and 50's and so while perhaps you can only think of computers in the context of a PC (a personal computer), NK certainly could have had a technology "hacking" team since the 50's or 60's (if not before).
Turning out 100 new team members a year? who knows..
They may not have any people or as you suggest it might be just a few.. but trust that they have the lastest technology.
They are a big exporter of long range missles, etc. If they can smuggle huge amounts of arms technology around the globe they can certainly pick up a few WinTel or Linux boxes..
This is a country with 100,000 special force troops.. and with a fairly good athletics; when they put their minds to something they do have the dollars.
They kidnapped Japanese people and brought them there so they could train their spies how to fit into Japanese society.
If they wanted, they could certainly kidnap some hackers from Germany, China or elsewhere..
Or if geeks do as geeks are, promising them some hot Korean Babes the hackers might come for free, as it were...
I've entered a few sites I run and 2 of the 4 gave a "not found" error and then when retried, it worked. Perhaps a local DNS problem but probably something not working well enough on the google side...
It's also worth considering that if they can run on Intel, they can run on AMD as well..
Certainly BSD is highly portable and parts of the MacOS includes bits of NetBSD which is especially portable...
But if you get over the "mine is bigger and faster than yours" basically the shift the marketing message from "Speed vs Speed" to one of technical merit about UI and so forth... because once they switch (if they switch), WinTel and Mac "computers" will have the same speed, in the same time frame.. so the Gigahertz #'s about speed/performance disapear.
It's also clear w/ the IPOD that see the value of a greater marketshare and customer acceptance. Price is a big part of that and like they have done with IDE, PCI, USB, etc. switching to Intel probably means they can lower their price without cutting profit(s), that means greater marketshare, etc.
Then with a WINK about anti-virsus and a concerned "deep voice" about terrorism, they Govt. will make it clear that only criminals woudld CPU (etc.) withOUT DRM...
The issue is timely... not it's existance.. IMHO.. they should have frozen the account and have some business process in place to investigate..
And building in all legal and other fees into their EULA or other documents and charging that to the person who put up the false pictures, etc. should stop this from happening widely..
The Net effect of free downloads and the way sampling (of music) lowers transaction costs combines with the demand for music that isn't totally based on price-based elasticity is that free downloads and sampled music increase sales, not decrease them.
Now we just have to prove it... The same should prove true for TV and movies, if we can only prove that too..
There is huge evidence that making content available widely drives sales. Radio sold records until MTV came along and proved it could also sell records, and by then tapes and CDs.
The MPAA tried to kill the VCR, didn't and we got a huge industry out of it. Taping shows didn't kill TV.
The issue economically as I know it, is demand, and specifically the elasticity of demand. The idea here is simple as you raise and lower the price of an item you might change the demand.
If demand is non-elastic then the price change doesn't affect demand. You can charge $1 or Millions of $$ and you will still sell only X amount.
When demand is elastic, then the price effects demand, theoretically for MOST products, the lower the price the greater the demand. In some classical cases with items like perfume a higher price can increase the demand or at least the total economic profit.
When you buy something there are opportunity costs and transactional costs. The opportunity costs are that you are spending time, effort and energy that might have been better spent in other ways. You want to buy a Boat or a Car but you are 90% sure you want the car, spending 1000 hours researching boats might be a waste of opportunity. The transactional cost is that you don't know enough about what you are buying and that you'll make a bad transaction. The hand made heirloom museum quality Oriental rug turns out NOT to be so... You bought the wrong computer or the wrong software. That's why for big ticket items there are consultants who do "package selection" for companies.
So back to TV and Music, movies and other downloadables. I like that term. There are packaged goods, and food stuffs and now today downloadables. With downloadables, the "Industry" is saying that demand is totally elastic and that the good are Fungible (meaning a MP3 downloaded via bit-torrent is the same/equal as a CD; that one can easily replace the other as one bushel of winter wheat replaces another).
Thus they are predicting increases in downloads lowers sales and that as the downloads grow in quantity that the decline in sales will increase, perhaps more rapidly.
The evidence is of course doesn't back that up. What the informal evidence shows is that transaction costs and elasticity of demand cross each other. That will lower prices people buy more. But when it's free, people are still willing to buy, meaning demand isn't completely elastic and/or current downloadable technology isn't fungible with CDs. Also by listening to music, not just once but many times on the radio, MTV or via a downloadable file, people overcome the transaction costs and are able to feel more comfortable buying CDs/tapes, etc.
The Net effect of free downloads and the way sampling (of music) lowers transaction costs combines with the demand for music that isn't totally based on price-based elasticity is that free downloads and sampled music increase sales, not decrease them. Now we just have to prove i... The same should prove true for TV and movies, if we can only prove that too..
It would be of course interesting to know if they are holding something back or just keeping their own code private... but doesn't things like the DMCA prevent "the community" from taking a look...
If it is something private, non-GPL code is it likely to be something small but critical like some driver? or is it likely to be something resulting from 1000's of staff hours..?
And then when they do licence the technology they produce something they call a derivative work and stop paying any license fee. They did that with Apple..
The only good thing that might come of that is if there is case law on the record that shows that it's easy to make derivative work (e.g., not so many changes...) which would help those who (for example) sample music and there by create a new derivative work..
Oh, and there are always ways to make copies that don't violate the copy protection, unless they make a book you can't read or a CD you can't listen too.
Let's just say I stick to a libertarian view of property rights and criminal penalties. The penalty shouldn't be greater than the crime and when the "crime" makes money (ok hard to prove) for the rights holder, there isn't any crime or there at least isn't any penalty.
In terms of property rights, if you want to keep your property private please do so. Keep the Madonna song just "produced" in a safe where no one can hear it. If you put it out in to the public, via copyright, or other forms of publication, then you have given up a great deal of control over it and ultimately, if not immediately, agree to put it into the public domain.
It's the record companies that put this stuff out in public, in plain view. I'm sorry that gives them some thought that they will still some how retain control over it.
DMCA wise, does recording a song as it plays out of the speaker violate copy-protection? What about taking a picture of some text on a screen that comes from a secure "E-BOOK"?
As someone else here has written, Copyright without fair use is not constitutional. Yes, you can publish a book in an INK that can't be photocopied, but if someone has a camera that can copy it, does that Camera really become a criminal's tool?
If they had killed the VCR (e.g., Betamax) then there wouldn't be any players in homes and then yes, as you confirm, "thousands, if not tens of thousands, of copies of each video on DVD" would never have been sold.
What I didn't say, is I'd like to see some type of legal challenge to the record companies copyright claiming that the finished song, music and performance is no different from the Album so that they can't claim the rights that have already been award to the creative arists.
Now they will claim every thing from the layout of the tracks and the final production, etc. but those are in my view all work for hire and those rights should be wrapped up in the various artist rights.
Basically, since they are coming at US so hard, so fierce, we need to go after them where it really counts and hopefully (or wishfully) where they are most vunerable...
1) File sharing and "ripping and sharing" in general expand the market and drive up sales and possible, disintermediation of the record labels.
2) MPIA has been wrong about this issue; they would have killed the VCR rental market, for example; instead a multi-billion dollar business was created.
3) For a song, there is the copyright on the words (Lyrics; song writer) and the (Music; composer) and is their copyright for the performance as well (e.g., the artists). I believe the record companies also assert a copyright on the finished album (CD) as well; which maybe legal and all, but well isn't really for something all that creative and artistic that it would worth copyrighting (and the some day releasing it into the public domain.
4) You certainly have the right to make archive copies and/or to use that copy and keep the "master/original" safely stored for safe keeping.
5) If you also have the right to lend your CD to a friend or have a library and lend out CDs/DVDs.
6) Do you really however, have the right make copies of your archive and lend/give those?
6a) While it's good for business to do so (my belief), I think it is illegal.
6b) I've driven through south central LA and seen crack being sold in 20 sec. transactions and at the time said, when you can sell 1 Terabyte of music that way, legal or NOT, copyright becomes some you can not enforce. That doesn't make it legal, but makes it so you would want to change the law...
7) Economist and Hover Inst. Fellow, Thomas Sowell called P2P sharing akin to fencing stolen goods, but for that to fly you'd have to "selling" the copies... It's not fencing, if anything its accessory to theft, but it's possible (AND THIS IS BIG THING) that accepting that it is THEFT, that there is NO Damage and NO Loss; again it actually has inverse damages; it enriches the copyright holders (see points 2 and 6a.
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You have some very strong opinions which seem to be a bit of a love hate things with Apple and Steve, and so forth.
I think the net result is Apple is embracing commodity hardware. They have done that with USB, IDE, PCI, etc. and done well with it. Steve killed off the clones (which I thought was a bad move) but he still needs more market share and this is a way to do it without clones. The real question is will there be a reference design and have them basically get out of the hardware business?
There was always the thought they did UI better than others, but they have had lots of bad market timing (can you say "Newton!). With the Ipod they hit the MP3 player market not with the 1st wave but with the 2nd or 3rd and hit it right, although too much $$ for me personally...
Now they have a name that's "KEWL" and Hip and so forth... and we have a generation that has grown up with PCs. For them (like some of us but NOT our PEERS) PCs so they are NOT some scary "thing"; SO... MS can FUD FUD FUD all they want and kids know it's just some software and hardware... nothing really worthy of the FUD.
You say the Premium will not dip more than $100; if that's the case it will still increase market share, as I'm sure every $100 drop in price equates to a few % penetration.
I'm guessing that a APPLE sells for 10% more than a similarly configured DELL; and that it will equal more than a $100 drop in price. What remains is will there be any "custom" hardware (e.g., perhaps only the single button mouse!).
> I'm tired of them making sweeping decisions
This certainly is a big switch and it does
seem sweeping, but you write:
> decisions that affect the userbase
I'm really not sure how this impacts the user base
The you write:
> I don't particularly want to see all my expensive Apple hardware depreciate spectacularly
So the real issue is $$$, but all computers depreciate and while Apples do tend to hold value longers, most computer owners hold on to and use computers long past the time that retain any real value.
Do you really expect to sell your new computer before it's worth very little? or do you just like the IDEA that it hold it's value longer?
Do you only buy top end cars that also hold their value and increase while most cars decrease?
This is good for consumers.
7 20974
1) I trust apple to minimize the impact on customers; they have always managed to do that.
2) This means WinTel vs. MacOS, in terms of Speed/Power, "Cores" and anything else will now
always equal "The Same."
3) This means the debate will be about the quality of the code, etc.
4) This also means lower prices and lower prices mean both greater market share and better margins for Apple and that is also good for consumers.
I wrote about these issues before:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=151621&cid=12
and finally
5) The PPC might be good technically but there just isn't enough base to keep it going and keep it affordable. Running one of the world's best OS on what amounts to a private label chip isn't a good idea.
6) All this assumes Mac/OS runs on off the shelf Intel chips and not something custom made or funky..
We need open source at the CHIP level and to develop hard ware level "trust" scheme (hardware, software, firmware, blah blah blah) that are open source.
And yes, it's not about them trusting us, its about us (not trusting THEM) and us controling every bit of code that's running, and then getting to a baseline and not allowing ANY new code without our permission..
One good thing might be to allow new code install only when NOT network connected..
THanks :)
I think you have a good thought there.. and either way, than play off any Intel compatible chip producer. What would be interesting if AMD/IBM can do some special engineering at the chip level that would a) not raise the price and b) give them some advantage
Given that, perhaps, some day robots will share very close and very trusted relationships with human; e.g., give "freedom" of movement in their homes, offices, cars, etc. and perhaps given some spending authority, passwords, and other means to access resources on behave of the home/office they toil in... having their source and design as open source is a fairly critical to insure (on the macro level) that particular classes of robots don't contain lurking evil.
However, IMHO, it will take some type of trusted computer system (open sourced I hope!! please! Please!!), to insure that an individual robot isn't lurking in your home with evil within its programming...
[I've been trying to get my homeBot to clean up the kitchen but those damm spybots and Trojan Virus have it wacked out going around in small circles in the bathroom (and have had it lock itself in!; glad we have more than one bathroom...]
sure #'s lie and bigger isn't always better.. Iraq did have some hard core troops.. Nothing that could withstand US air power.. it wasn't like we battled it out in the trenches (ala' WWI).
But NK has access to top Soviet and Chinese Technology and a spy network that could bring them any needed US technology (or that from Japan).
Since the "internet" or Internet Protocol didn't "turn on until 1983" even the US didn't
have a "single" internet connection in 1981.. hmmmmm and yet here we are!
ARPAnet dates from the late 60's and forgetting Babbages' failures, there have been industrial uses for computers from the last 40's and 50's and so while perhaps you can only think of computers in the context of a PC (a personal computer), NK certainly could have had a technology "hacking" team since the 50's or 60's (if not before).
Turning out 100 new team members a year? who knows..
They may not have any people or as you suggest it might be just a few.. but trust that they have the lastest technology.
They are a big exporter of long range missles, etc. If they can smuggle huge amounts of arms technology around the globe they can certainly pick up a few WinTel or Linux boxes..
This is a country with 100,000 special force troops.. and with a fairly good athletics; when they put their minds to something they do have the dollars.
They kidnapped Japanese people and brought them there so they could train their spies how to fit into Japanese society.
If they wanted, they could certainly kidnap some hackers from Germany, China or elsewhere..
Or if geeks do as geeks are, promising them some hot Korean Babes the hackers might come for free, as it were...
I've entered a few sites I run and 2 of the 4 gave a "not found" error and then when retried, it worked. Perhaps a local DNS problem but probably something not working well enough on the google side...
It's also worth considering that if they can run on Intel, they can run on AMD as well..
Certainly BSD is highly portable and parts of the MacOS includes bits of NetBSD which is especially portable...
But if you get over the "mine is bigger and faster than yours" basically the shift the marketing message from "Speed vs Speed" to one of technical merit about UI and so forth... because once they switch (if they switch), WinTel and Mac "computers" will have the same speed, in the same time frame.. so the Gigahertz #'s about speed/performance disapear.
It's also clear w/ the IPOD that see the value of a greater marketshare and customer acceptance. Price is a big part of that and like they have done with IDE, PCI, USB, etc. switching to Intel probably means they can lower their price without cutting profit(s), that means greater marketshare, etc.
Then with a WINK about anti-virsus and a concerned "deep voice" about terrorism, they Govt. will make it clear that only criminals woudld CPU (etc.) withOUT DRM...
The issue is timely... not it's existance..
IMHO.. they should have frozen the account and
have some business process in place to investigate..
And building in all legal and other fees into their EULA or other documents and charging that to the person who put up the false pictures, etc. should stop this from happening widely..
Clearly this is a violation of DCMA... ;)
The Net effect of free downloads and the way sampling (of music) lowers transaction costs combines with the demand for music that isn't totally based on price-based elasticity is that free downloads and sampled music increase sales, not decrease them.
Now we just have to prove it... The same should prove true for TV and movies, if we can only prove that too..
There is huge evidence that making content available widely drives sales. Radio sold records until MTV came along and proved it could also sell records, and by then tapes and CDs.
The MPAA tried to kill the VCR, didn't and we got a huge industry out of it. Taping shows didn't kill TV.
The issue economically as I know it, is demand, and specifically the elasticity of demand. The idea here is simple as you raise and lower the price of an item you might change the demand.
If demand is non-elastic then the price change doesn't affect demand. You can charge $1 or Millions of $$ and you will still sell only X amount.
When demand is elastic, then the price effects demand, theoretically for MOST products, the lower the price the greater the demand. In some classical cases with items like perfume a higher price can increase the demand or at least the total economic profit.
When you buy something there are opportunity costs and transactional costs. The opportunity costs are that you are spending time, effort and energy that might have been better spent in other ways. You want to buy a Boat or a Car but you are 90% sure you want the car, spending 1000 hours researching boats might be a waste of opportunity. The transactional cost is that you don't know enough about what you are buying and that you'll make a bad transaction. The hand made heirloom museum quality Oriental rug turns out NOT to be so... You bought the wrong computer or the wrong software. That's why for big ticket items there are consultants who do "package selection" for companies.
So back to TV and Music, movies and other downloadables. I like that term. There are packaged goods, and food stuffs and now today downloadables. With downloadables, the "Industry" is saying that demand is totally elastic and that the good are Fungible (meaning a MP3 downloaded via bit-torrent is the same/equal as a CD; that one can easily replace the other as one bushel of winter wheat replaces another).
Thus they are predicting increases in downloads lowers sales and that as the downloads grow in quantity that the decline in sales will increase, perhaps more rapidly.
The evidence is of course doesn't back that up. What the informal evidence shows is that transaction costs and elasticity of demand cross each other. That will lower prices people buy more. But when it's free, people are still willing to buy, meaning demand isn't completely elastic and/or current downloadable technology isn't fungible with CDs. Also by listening to music, not just once but many times on the radio, MTV or via a downloadable file, people overcome the transaction costs and are able to feel more comfortable buying CDs/tapes, etc.
The Net effect of free downloads and the way sampling (of music) lowers transaction costs combines with the demand for music that isn't totally based on price-based elasticity is that free downloads and sampled music increase sales, not decrease them. Now we just have to prove i... The same should prove true for TV and movies, if we can only prove that too..
It would be of course interesting to know if they are holding something back or just keeping their own code private... but doesn't things like the DMCA prevent "the community" from taking a look...
If it is something private, non-GPL code is it likely to be something small but critical like some driver? or is it likely to be something resulting from 1000's of staff hours..?
Perhaps we will never know.
And then when they do licence the technology they produce something they call a derivative work and stop paying any license fee. They did that with Apple..
The only good thing that might come of that is if there is case law on the record that shows that it's easy to make derivative work (e.g., not so many changes...) which would help those who (for example) sample music and there by create a new derivative work..
Oh, and there are always ways to make copies that don't violate the copy protection, unless they make a book you can't read or a CD you can't listen too.
Let's just say I stick to a libertarian view of property rights and criminal penalties. The penalty shouldn't be greater than the crime and when the "crime" makes money (ok hard to prove) for the rights holder, there isn't any crime or there at least isn't any penalty.
In terms of property rights, if you want to keep your property private please do so. Keep the Madonna song just "produced" in a safe where no one can hear it. If you put it out in to the public, via copyright, or other forms of publication, then you have given up a great deal of control over it and ultimately, if not immediately, agree to put it into the public domain.
It's the record companies that put this stuff out in public, in plain view. I'm sorry that gives them some thought that they will still some how retain control over it.
DMCA wise, does recording a song as it plays out of the speaker violate copy-protection? What about taking a picture of some text on a screen that comes from a secure "E-BOOK"?
As someone else here has written, Copyright without fair use is not constitutional. Yes, you can publish a book in an INK that can't be photocopied, but if someone has a camera that can copy it, does that Camera really become a criminal's tool?
"under the DMCA it is illegal to make an otherwise-legal archive copy if that involves circumventing a copy protection scheme."
has that held up in court?
Horse and Cart.
If they had killed the VCR (e.g., Betamax) then there wouldn't be any players in homes and then yes, as you confirm, "thousands, if not tens of thousands, of copies of each video on DVD" would never have been sold.
Yes :) and then of course leads to increases in sales, concert attendance, etc.
What I didn't say, is I'd like to see some type of legal challenge to the record companies copyright claiming that the finished song, music and performance is no different from the Album so that they can't claim the rights that have already been award to the creative arists.
Now they will claim every thing from the layout of the tracks and the final production, etc. but those are in my view all work for hire and those rights should be wrapped up in the various artist rights.
Basically, since they are coming at US so hard, so fierce, we need to go after them where it really counts and hopefully (or wishfully) where they are most vunerable...
Lots of issues here; let's walk through them all
1) File sharing and "ripping and sharing" in general expand the market and drive up sales and possible, disintermediation of the record labels.
2) MPIA has been wrong about this issue; they would have killed the VCR rental market, for example; instead a multi-billion dollar business was created.
3) For a song, there is the copyright on the words (Lyrics; song writer) and the (Music; composer) and is their copyright for the performance as well (e.g., the artists). I believe the record companies also assert a copyright on the finished album (CD) as well; which maybe legal and all, but well isn't really for something all that creative and artistic that it would worth copyrighting (and the some day releasing it into the public domain.
4) You certainly have the right to make archive copies and/or to use that copy and keep the "master/original" safely stored for safe keeping.
5) If you also have the right to lend your CD to a friend or have a library and lend out CDs/DVDs.
6) Do you really however, have the right make copies of your archive and lend/give those?
6a) While it's good for business to do so (my belief), I think it is illegal.
6b) I've driven through south central LA and seen crack being sold in 20 sec. transactions and at the time said, when you can sell 1 Terabyte of music that way, legal or NOT, copyright becomes some you can not enforce. That doesn't make it legal, but makes it so you would want to change the law...
7) Economist and Hover Inst. Fellow, Thomas Sowell called P2P sharing akin to fencing stolen goods, but for that to fly you'd have to "selling" the copies... It's not fencing, if anything its accessory to theft, but it's possible (AND THIS IS BIG THING) that accepting that it is THEFT, that there is NO Damage and NO Loss; again it actually has inverse damages; it enriches the copyright holders (see points 2 and 6a.