and the principle behind it is really obnoxious, but fundamentally it's not much money.
No, in the great scheme of things, $5.2 million isn't really that much money. But take a look at the revenue growth over the past several years-- it almost seems to be obeying it's own version of Moore's law. That's no reason to assume that the trend will continue, but it certainly seems likely that the revenue collection will increase significantly faster than inflation.
Take a look at the figures in a few years, they may not seem so trifling.
However, the fact remains that the thing being patented is NOT "online greeting cards" so "prior art" by Blue Mountain et. al. is not at all pertinent, despite dozens of posts saying contrariwise. I *did* read the press release from Tumbleweed, which doesn't say a damn thing about having patented online greeting cards.
It is very pertinent, if the previous greeting card delivery systems used a system anything like the one patented by Tumbleweed. And I can't imagine that the system these early services used would not easily fall under the aegis of this patent.
Essentially, a document is generated or uploaded, and a special URL is mailed to the recipient. This URL contains a unique document ID and the ID of the recipient. It's not rocket science-- I would be surprised if there aren't plenty of earlier systems that use this technique. Not to mention hundreds of later systems that adopted it because the idea is so "obvious", also grounds for overturning a patent.
, the responsible managers and employees, should be held strictly liable for material damage done by their property.
What if the responsible managers/employees/corporations are out of business, or broke? What if they deliberately operate close to the bone, to insure that they can't lose much when their violations are discovered?
More understandably, MS's salespeople are braindead. As most salespeople appear to be from an outside perspective. A lot of sales is really driven by personality, persistence, and (if you're lucky) the willingness of your company to abuse its monopoly status to apply pressure or offer money-losing incentives to lock a customer into your company's platform.
Reading the email, it sounds stupid, but it is a pretty straightforward strategy. Tell your salespeople to look for non-Microsoft products, then coordinate to find a way to replace it with a Microsoft product. At the same time, commission a few bogus studies that'll sway the opinion of the average PHB.
It's a simple trick - they sent out slightly different copies of the email to everyone on the list. Then, when the public version gets published they can reference the published version against who got what.
Unless, of course, the leaker was wildly clever enough to anticipate this tactic (it is just about the oldest trick in the book), and perhaps copy-and-paste the email off of their worst enemy's machine.
The most amusing scenario would involve Brian Valentine et al. "discovering" the identity of the leaker, only to find out the malcontent is none other than... Brian Valentine.
About the GPL, he said "But if you say to people, "Do you understand the GPL?" And they'll say, "Huh?" And they're pretty stunned when the Pac-Man-like nature of it is described to them."
It tells you a lot about the people Bill Gates surrounds himself with. I can't imagine what kind of innovation you're going to accomplish when everybody around you is willing to praise the brilliance of your every utterance. That's great for a lazy trust-fund kid, but for a guy who's still running one of the largest American companies, it's not a recipe for long-term success. Better hang on tight to that monopoly, Billy.
Alternatively, the people he's talking about could be major American business leaders... In other words, the same people who would gladly distribute software under a license requiring the sacrifice of the user's firstborn... who are hideously offended that the GPL might require some small sacrifices fom the user in exchange for free redistribution rights.
I mean no offense, but whenever I hear the phrase, "What we really need is... legislation,"
I doubt that Qwest, before it swallowed US West, would have pulled this sort of crap. Too many customers would have defected. Unfortunately regional telcos like US West are government enforced monopolies. There's tons of legislation that allows them to exist, and even keeps out competition. So I appreciate your "no legislation is good legislation" sentiment, but until we actually embark on a plan to break these government-mandated monopolies and undo the effects of the existing system, we do need some decent legislation.
Some telcos would like to take advantage of the sort of anti-regulation paranoia evidenced in your reply to get Americans to accept the fucked-up deregulation plans they're buying in Congress. Sure, these companies are still monopolies, and they still love to take advantage of government regulation where it benefits them and prevents a true competitive environment. But if they play up the regulations they're opposed to, lots of otherwise intelligent Americans will resonate to the mindless "Government Regulation Is Bad" rhetoric they've grown up (sometimes rightly) believing. The telcos can then make a smooth transition from government-mandated, regulated monopolies to government-tolerated, unregulated monopolies without the pesky middle-step where competition is allowed to flourish.
...makes me want to head for the hills...
No offense intended, but occasionally when somebody provides a more "detailed" argument: "government shouldn't regulate these companies, instead consumers should just boycott them", I actually do envision a bunch of righteous libertarians living in the hills. In little shacks with no electricity, no jobs or bank accounts, no phone service.
I would like to see a study detailing the total percentage of your time that would be involved in reading the complete T&C attached to every modern service and convenience used by the average person.
Remember, that includes those contracts whose full terms aren't listed above the signature line (credit card or delivery receipts), of which the difficulty of obtaining might be considerable.
I would imagine that it would take at least 25% of our available time. Perhaps the best solution would be to require that all service providers insure that their customers have read and understood the terms before accepting a signature. That would certainly clear a lot of the problems up.
Seriously, if you sign a contract and then cried foul when you realise you what you just signed, but then claimed your excuse was "but i didnt read it, i just accepted it!", all but the most money grabbing of lawyers (i mean that in a nice way guys) would laugh at you.
What the heck are you talking about? None of these people signed any contract that included the information on this mailer. That's why the tiny, anonymous mailer was sent out-- to "clarify" your rights under the law-- which most people, including even some RBOCs, read as preventing the sale of personal information like call logs. It then names some arbitrary 30 day period (starting when?) after which your information can and will be given out.
On top of that, as the response to the writeup demonstrates, even an attempt to "opt out" of the unilateral "agreement" that Qwest has made you party to is doomed to failure. Both the phone response and web response system seem to be broken.
So again, I see no evidence that these people "accepted" anything-- given the difficulty Qwest will have in proving that their response system is functional, or that this move is even strictly legal (a contract cannot override the law.) And yes, people should ditch Qwest. Problem is that since Qwest bought US West, they're a regional monopoly-- I don't know if most local customers have anywhere else to go.
A couple of years ago I signed up for local service with Bell Atlantic. Somewhere along the way, the woman taking my information made a mistake, and instead of using my actual first name, she decided to list my phone number under the name of a fairly obnoxious celebrity.
I found out about the mistake within a billing cycle, and called them up to have it changed. This operation was completely successful, but it did nothing to stem the tide of calls coming in from other parts of the country-- where apparently the local phone information was a long ways from its next five-year synchronization point.
Now imagine the wonderful mistakes that will occur when Qwest (the company known for its aggressive slamming practices and disastrous customer service) starts distributing that data.
A computer might be able to help with the stuff in the middle-- linking objects to interfaces to objects, or whatever-- but it simply can't generate those two main things for you.
But that's a colossal amount of work right there. If the OS world could generate reams of well-written components, tools that would allow programmers to quickly snap them together would make it a lot easier to turn good ideas into reality.
Of course there'd still be a need for hand-tooled code, but so much time is spent reinventing the wheel, or strapping it on with duct tape.
For this to work, the network must deliver a unique Mb/s data stream from the headend to each consumer. How many cable plants can do that today?
Each 6Mhz analog TV band (in the upper ranges) can carry between 27 and 32 Mbps. That's 9 or 10 streams per band, assuming MPEG-II at 3 Mbps (although eventually a better codec could reduce the bandwidth requirements.)
Obviously, the bands in the lower end of the TV range can't carry as much information. Traditional cable networks also budget a very large number of them for analog programs, but sooner or later that'll have to go away.
For now, let's assume 50 bands allocated to digital programming, including traditional broadcast and VOD. That's between 450 and 500 independent programs per local cable loop. If you assume that each loop can be reduced to 300-400 homes, you can provide between 1 and 2 unique programs to each home on the loop-- assuming 100% take and 100% use. This is absolutely the worst usage scenario.
Of course, some of those programs will be traditional "live" broadcast channels (MTV, NBC, etc.) But there's no reason those channels can't be "multicast" on demand, which keeps them from tying up bandwidth when they're not being watched, and also saves bandwidth when multiple people are watching the same channel.
A major constraint is that the number of homes per local loop be kept low, and that there be an adequate quantity of fiber bandwidth connecting the head-end to the local loops. The obvious advantage is that you can provide serious VOD service without running fiber to the home, or leaving expensive, fault-prone digital switches/servers out in the field.
To be honest, this is just casual diddling. Does anybody have any idea how far off this estimate is, or how much total bandwidth can really be squeezed out of the full cable TV spectrum?
That comment was moreso aimed at the MSNBC article that you referenced, which was almost entirely dismissing the movie in relation to the book.
I know several people who saw the movie without having read the book, and their reviews were decidedly less enthusiastic. It's a double-edged sword. While knowledge of the book invites potentially unfavorable comparison, it also makes the movie much more coherent and enjoyable.
I think you have been watching too much propadanda.
Hmm. All I can think of is that time in 9th grade when our science teacher screened "Your Friend the Atom". I don't suppose that's what you're talking about, though:)
It's a whole lot easier to find pirated "content", than it is to find illegal drugs.
You're absolutely right, and I stand corrected.
However, as a personal anecdote, my father visited me a few weeks back (he lives in a rural area, I live in NYC.) We were walking through Chinatown when he spotted copies of some silly Hollywood movie (still in theatres) being sold on the streetcorner. I see these things every day, so the notion of easy access to pirated movies is nothing special. He, on the other hand, was utterly amazed that he could buy this movie right on the street for $5 (and bought a copy just to see if it was what was advertised.)
So yes, pirated materials are probably more common than drugs. But most average people like my dad just don't consider them as something they'd ever have an interest in-- not because they're uncommon, but because most people don't think high-quality knockoffs will ever be within easy reach. Now imagine all these people getting broadband connections, and you've explained the incredible popularity of Napster, and the explosion of video copying to come.
Funny. I thought most of the cool tech stuff was being developed and manufactured in the far East...
Sorry, the "tech faction" in the article referred specifically to the general purpose computing industry. I still had this phrase in mind when I posted-- I should have made it clearer what part of the tech industry I was talking about.
As far as I know, America holds a major leadership role in that industry (Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Sun, SGI, HP, Apple, etc etc.)
But adapt they won't. Or, at least, it looks like they have no plans to at the current moment. And if they fail to adapt, and instead put their business at the mercy of this ridiculous "kneecap all computers to prevent piracy" initiative, we could end up with a seriously damaged Content industry and a decimated Computing industry.
However, it doesn't matter to them: the drug lords in the DEA are employed and wealthy, and will continue to protect themselves by insisting that this idiocy continue.
To go back to the issue at hand, the difference between this "war" and the drug war is that this one will only last as long as it's profitable.
If "pirated" content becomes as widely available as street drugs, it's unlikely that the content industries will stay be able to stay in the business-- or at least, their power (which is a direct function of their cash flow) will wane significantly. And if Disney et al. do leave the business, there's really nothing left for the gov't to fight for.
That could take a few years, though. And in the mean time, the collateral damage could be enormous. I'm not speaking just of the Dmitri Skylarovs to come, but of the entire American computer industry. There are many up and coming industrial nations who're just dying to take the mantle of industry leadership away from the US, and aren't willing to place Hollywood's profits ahead of that goal. If Eisner gets his way, pehaps American programmers will be applying for H1-B Visas to India sometime in the near future.
But editors in the respected news firms of the world do not say things as unproductive as those who edit on Slashdot. As editors, they have a RESPONSIBLITY to get _news_ to us, not their own biased point of view.
I can't tell you how annoyed I get every time I read a [insert major newspaper here] article about the latest worm that's wreaked "hundreds of millions of dollars" of damage upon American businesses.
A lot of people are blamed, heads are called for (usually some dumb teenager in Kinosha or the Phillipines, wherever.) But in not one single instance have I read an article that pointed out the key fact-- that not one of those millions of dollars would have been lost had Microsoft simply built a product with a better security architecture.
So while I appreciate your quest for accurate news reporting, I don't find it in the major new outlets. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft bears a great deal of responsibility for the existence of these worms. Preventing the execution of potentially dangerous code should be a priority. These issues are not new with Windows, but even by the standards of recent Microsoft history they're old hat. How long ago was it that Microsoft Word was first infested by Macro viruses, and how many products and OS designs have made the same mistakes (on a grander scale) since then?
I'll take the opinionated rantings of the Slashdot editors (with the subsequent opinionated rantings of the pro-MS lobby) over the non-news I see in the "respected" sources.
Why do the editors of Slashdot ALWAYS put their unproductive, derogatory, flaming, two cents at the end of _every_ story regarding something "AWFUL" Microsoft has done?
Because to a programmer/architect/sysadmin, the mere existence of these worms is mind-boggling. Imagine the largest-selling American car manufacturer building all of their models with the gas tank right behind the front bumper, or some such idiocy. Now you, as an automotive columnist (with some professional understanding of auto design), are forced to report every time one of these Hindenburgs ends up as a firey wreck.
It'd be bad enough if this happened in one model of car, but to see it happen year after year, when the company should know better, has to be somewhat irritating. I'll let MS slightly off the hook when a "legitimate" bug is found-- that is, one that might not have been directly anticipated when the product was being designed. But each of these worms exist as a result of MS's ongoing, dunderheaded ignorance of basic security issues. Windows scripting on as default? Minimal security in their email software? Preview panes that can automatically execute scripts?
So yes, the Slashdot editors' scorn is thoroughly justified in these cases. If you're looking for more objectivity in your reporting, there are other places to go. If you stuck to the reports I've seen in reputable newspapers, you wouldn't even have to suffer the notion of Microsoft as a responsible party. If you think that's the case, choose your news sources differently. Slashdot is run (and contributed to) by people who take this sort of stuff a little bit personally.
Verizon & esp. SBC might still be said to be doing well. Their customer service may suck worse than ever, but are they making money?
Yes, I'm sorry if my original post was confusing. Verizon is doing pretty well, especially compared to the more competitive Telecoms (AT&T, WorldCom). Nobody has ever convincingly argued that Verizon is well-managed (remember, this is GTE and Bell Atlantic we're talking about.) What V's got going for it is a monopoly, and the loads of reliable cash that brings in. And of course, the reflexive ability to use that cash to protect its own interests.
The major distinguishing characteristic of the Bells is that they're a legal monopoly. They can get away with a whole lot more than a company like IBM or even Microsoft because nobody has ever come up with a real plan for promoting competition in local service. You could break the Bells up, but then you'd just have a bunch of smaller monopolies (though I think that'd be a better situation than the MaBell-reborn behemoths that are taking shape in companies like Verizon.)
The lesson of the past few years is that legal monopolies do pretty well as long as nobody imposes too much change on them; for example, via Government intervention, or voluntary changes like PG&E made.
If this is true, why is it still so fucking expensive?
Well, it has gotten somewhat cheaper. But my answer to your question is: Because it cost a phenomenal amount of money to build out the fiber, and even more to maintain and operate it. One of the less well-advertised side effects of capitalism is that oversupply can lead to higher prices, as businesses are forced to raise per-unit prices to cover their debt and expenses.
Until the last-mile is really built out, long-distance data carriers know that they won't really have enough business to justify lowering prices much. In the mean time, those people who need to move data will be forced to settle for whatever price they can get.
Now, the above answer might not be completely accurate. But the inarguable bottom line is that carriers have a lot of dark fiber out there that may never see use. And even more debt that's not being paid back.
Even worse, if control over the last mile is split between the Baby Bells and a relatively small cable company like Comcast (which will probably be somewhat overextended following this purchase), don't look to see the wide area data business taking off any time soon. It'd take someone really aggressive to build out really high speed broadband connections (like fiber to the home) fast enough to make a major difference. The Bells have shown no interest in doing anything to upset their applecart, unless directly pressured by competition. Comcast simply won't have the cash. AT&T wanted to go in this direction, three years ago... But now they've completely dropped the ball.
Remaining AT&T collapses under it's own weight (and stupidity).
To be fair, the Baby Bells aren't paragons of efficiency and brilliant management.
The true moral of this story follows:
Stupidity + Competition = Disaster
Stupidity + Monopoly = Success beyond your wildest dreams.
For an example of the latter, take a look at Wall Street's darling Verizon, the lovechild of the two dumbest corporate monopolies ever set loose to roam over the land.
Upon further inquiry, it seems AT&T has decided that they really just suck at being a large company and had to split once again, this time under their own influence, into several smaller companies.
Or more accurately, the AT&T executives have realized that they can make out like bandits every time they split or merge-- regardless of how it affects the company.
I'm curious about what's left now that AT&T's spun off Wireless and Broadband. Long distance, as AT&T was so fond of telling us a couple years ago, is headed for the toilet in a few years. Wide area data networking is a overbuilt and likely to stay that way for a long time to come.
So what's the future for this company?
Re:Is it the price of bandwidth?
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The primary problem that causes MOST businesses to go under is the costs of something; labor, raw materials, bandwidth, something costs more than what they thought it would. That doesn't mean somebody needs to make it cost less; it often means the folks starting the business need to come up with a better business plan.
You're absolutely right. Problem is, there is no good business plan available for most sites that want to distribute content or news. If you run a TV/radio station or a newspaper with a regular audience in the millions, you can do quite well off of the advertising $$. If you run an even more popular website, you're going to make a fraction of that amount.
Some say the scarcity of advertising money is due to the limitations of the format. To a larger extent, thought, it's an artificial situation brought about by major advertisers' unwillingness to gamble on an unproven format. They have the money, so they say which formats live or die.
A good example of this is advertisers' unwillingness to experiment with time-shifted TV advertising. Right now it's well within the limits of technology to customize the advertising displayed to every viewer with a modern cable box or Tivo. But advertisers don't even want to experiment with this technology because they've got a very reliable system that works purely on the basis of what type of people tune in at a given time. Even though a lot of their money is being wasted on people with no interest in a given product.
That's business, and I understand your point. However, I do find it to be a shame that such a promising area of business is being starved to death as a result.
Or distributed content distribution, as with Akamai. With all the filesharing that's going on, it surprises me that there are no good p2p apps that perform this task.
Slashdot Mirror
No, in the great scheme of things, $5.2 million isn't really that much money. But take a look at the revenue growth over the past several years-- it almost seems to be obeying it's own version of Moore's law. That's no reason to assume that the trend will continue, but it certainly seems likely that the revenue collection will increase significantly faster than inflation.
Take a look at the figures in a few years, they may not seem so trifling.
It is very pertinent, if the previous greeting card delivery systems used a system anything like the one patented by Tumbleweed. And I can't imagine that the system these early services used would not easily fall under the aegis of this patent.
Essentially, a document is generated or uploaded, and a special URL is mailed to the recipient. This URL contains a unique document ID and the ID of the recipient. It's not rocket science-- I would be surprised if there aren't plenty of earlier systems that use this technique. Not to mention hundreds of later systems that adopted it because the idea is so "obvious", also grounds for overturning a patent.
What if the responsible managers/employees/corporations are out of business, or broke? What if they deliberately operate close to the bone, to insure that they can't lose much when their violations are discovered?
More understandably, MS's salespeople are braindead. As most salespeople appear to be from an outside perspective. A lot of sales is really driven by personality, persistence, and (if you're lucky) the willingness of your company to abuse its monopoly status to apply pressure or offer money-losing incentives to lock a customer into your company's platform.
Reading the email, it sounds stupid, but it is a pretty straightforward strategy. Tell your salespeople to look for non-Microsoft products, then coordinate to find a way to replace it with a Microsoft product. At the same time, commission a few bogus studies that'll sway the opinion of the average PHB.
Unless, of course, the leaker was wildly clever enough to anticipate this tactic (it is just about the oldest trick in the book), and perhaps copy-and-paste the email off of their worst enemy's machine.
The most amusing scenario would involve Brian Valentine et al. "discovering" the identity of the leaker, only to find out the malcontent is none other than... Brian Valentine.
It tells you a lot about the people Bill Gates surrounds himself with. I can't imagine what kind of innovation you're going to accomplish when everybody around you is willing to praise the brilliance of your every utterance. That's great for a lazy trust-fund kid, but for a guy who's still running one of the largest American companies, it's not a recipe for long-term success. Better hang on tight to that monopoly, Billy.
Alternatively, the people he's talking about could be major American business leaders... In other words, the same people who would gladly distribute software under a license requiring the sacrifice of the user's firstborn... who are hideously offended that the GPL might require some small sacrifices fom the user in exchange for free redistribution rights.
I doubt that Qwest, before it swallowed US West, would have pulled this sort of crap. Too many customers would have defected. Unfortunately regional telcos like US West are government enforced monopolies. There's tons of legislation that allows them to exist, and even keeps out competition. So I appreciate your "no legislation is good legislation" sentiment, but until we actually embark on a plan to break these government-mandated monopolies and undo the effects of the existing system, we do need some decent legislation.
Some telcos would like to take advantage of the sort of anti-regulation paranoia evidenced in your reply to get Americans to accept the fucked-up deregulation plans they're buying in Congress. Sure, these companies are still monopolies, and they still love to take advantage of government regulation where it benefits them and prevents a true competitive environment. But if they play up the regulations they're opposed to, lots of otherwise intelligent Americans will resonate to the mindless "Government Regulation Is Bad" rhetoric they've grown up (sometimes rightly) believing. The telcos can then make a smooth transition from government-mandated, regulated monopolies to government-tolerated, unregulated monopolies without the pesky middle-step where competition is allowed to flourish.
No offense intended, but occasionally when somebody provides a more "detailed" argument: "government shouldn't regulate these companies, instead consumers should just boycott them", I actually do envision a bunch of righteous libertarians living in the hills. In little shacks with no electricity, no jobs or bank accounts, no phone service.
Remember, that includes those contracts whose full terms aren't listed above the signature line (credit card or delivery receipts), of which the difficulty of obtaining might be considerable.
I would imagine that it would take at least 25% of our available time. Perhaps the best solution would be to require that all service providers insure that their customers have read and understood the terms before accepting a signature. That would certainly clear a lot of the problems up.
What the heck are you talking about? None of these people signed any contract that included the information on this mailer. That's why the tiny, anonymous mailer was sent out-- to "clarify" your rights under the law-- which most people, including even some RBOCs, read as preventing the sale of personal information like call logs. It then names some arbitrary 30 day period (starting when?) after which your information can and will be given out.
On top of that, as the response to the writeup demonstrates, even an attempt to "opt out" of the unilateral "agreement" that Qwest has made you party to is doomed to failure. Both the phone response and web response system seem to be broken.
So again, I see no evidence that these people "accepted" anything-- given the difficulty Qwest will have in proving that their response system is functional, or that this move is even strictly legal (a contract cannot override the law.) And yes, people should ditch Qwest. Problem is that since Qwest bought US West, they're a regional monopoly-- I don't know if most local customers have anywhere else to go.
I found out about the mistake within a billing cycle, and called them up to have it changed. This operation was completely successful, but it did nothing to stem the tide of calls coming in from other parts of the country-- where apparently the local phone information was a long ways from its next five-year synchronization point.
Now imagine the wonderful mistakes that will occur when Qwest (the company known for its aggressive slamming practices and disastrous customer service) starts distributing that data.
But that's a colossal amount of work right there. If the OS world could generate reams of well-written components, tools that would allow programmers to quickly snap them together would make it a lot easier to turn good ideas into reality.
Of course there'd still be a need for hand-tooled code, but so much time is spent reinventing the wheel, or strapping it on with duct tape.
Each 6Mhz analog TV band (in the upper ranges) can carry between 27 and 32 Mbps. That's 9 or 10 streams per band, assuming MPEG-II at 3 Mbps (although eventually a better codec could reduce the bandwidth requirements.)
Obviously, the bands in the lower end of the TV range can't carry as much information. Traditional cable networks also budget a very large number of them for analog programs, but sooner or later that'll have to go away.
For now, let's assume 50 bands allocated to digital programming, including traditional broadcast and VOD. That's between 450 and 500 independent programs per local cable loop. If you assume that each loop can be reduced to 300-400 homes, you can provide between 1 and 2 unique programs to each home on the loop-- assuming 100% take and 100% use. This is absolutely the worst usage scenario.
Of course, some of those programs will be traditional "live" broadcast channels (MTV, NBC, etc.) But there's no reason those channels can't be "multicast" on demand, which keeps them from tying up bandwidth when they're not being watched, and also saves bandwidth when multiple people are watching the same channel.
A major constraint is that the number of homes per local loop be kept low, and that there be an adequate quantity of fiber bandwidth connecting the head-end to the local loops. The obvious advantage is that you can provide serious VOD service without running fiber to the home, or leaving expensive, fault-prone digital switches/servers out in the field.
To be honest, this is just casual diddling. Does anybody have any idea how far off this estimate is, or how much total bandwidth can really be squeezed out of the full cable TV spectrum?
I know several people who saw the movie without having read the book, and their reviews were decidedly less enthusiastic. It's a double-edged sword. While knowledge of the book invites potentially unfavorable comparison, it also makes the movie much more coherent and enjoyable.
Hmm. All I can think of is that time in 9th grade when our science teacher screened "Your Friend the Atom". I don't suppose that's what you're talking about, though :)
It's a whole lot easier to find pirated "content", than it is to find illegal drugs.
You're absolutely right, and I stand corrected.
However, as a personal anecdote, my father visited me a few weeks back (he lives in a rural area, I live in NYC.) We were walking through Chinatown when he spotted copies of some silly Hollywood movie (still in theatres) being sold on the streetcorner. I see these things every day, so the notion of easy access to pirated movies is nothing special. He, on the other hand, was utterly amazed that he could buy this movie right on the street for $5 (and bought a copy just to see if it was what was advertised.)
So yes, pirated materials are probably more common than drugs. But most average people like my dad just don't consider them as something they'd ever have an interest in-- not because they're uncommon, but because most people don't think high-quality knockoffs will ever be within easy reach. Now imagine all these people getting broadband connections, and you've explained the incredible popularity of Napster, and the explosion of video copying to come.
Sorry, the "tech faction" in the article referred specifically to the general purpose computing industry. I still had this phrase in mind when I posted-- I should have made it clearer what part of the tech industry I was talking about.
As far as I know, America holds a major leadership role in that industry (Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Sun, SGI, HP, Apple, etc etc.)
But adapt they won't. Or, at least, it looks like they have no plans to at the current moment. And if they fail to adapt, and instead put their business at the mercy of this ridiculous "kneecap all computers to prevent piracy" initiative, we could end up with a seriously damaged Content industry and a decimated Computing industry.
To go back to the issue at hand, the difference between this "war" and the drug war is that this one will only last as long as it's profitable.
If "pirated" content becomes as widely available as street drugs, it's unlikely that the content industries will stay be able to stay in the business-- or at least, their power (which is a direct function of their cash flow) will wane significantly. And if Disney et al. do leave the business, there's really nothing left for the gov't to fight for.
That could take a few years, though. And in the mean time, the collateral damage could be enormous. I'm not speaking just of the Dmitri Skylarovs to come, but of the entire American computer industry. There are many up and coming industrial nations who're just dying to take the mantle of industry leadership away from the US, and aren't willing to place Hollywood's profits ahead of that goal. If Eisner gets his way, pehaps American programmers will be applying for H1-B Visas to India sometime in the near future.
I can't tell you how annoyed I get every time I read a [insert major newspaper here] article about the latest worm that's wreaked "hundreds of millions of dollars" of damage upon American businesses.
A lot of people are blamed, heads are called for (usually some dumb teenager in Kinosha or the Phillipines, wherever.) But in not one single instance have I read an article that pointed out the key fact-- that not one of those millions of dollars would have been lost had Microsoft simply built a product with a better security architecture.
So while I appreciate your quest for accurate news reporting, I don't find it in the major new outlets. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft bears a great deal of responsibility for the existence of these worms. Preventing the execution of potentially dangerous code should be a priority. These issues are not new with Windows, but even by the standards of recent Microsoft history they're old hat. How long ago was it that Microsoft Word was first infested by Macro viruses, and how many products and OS designs have made the same mistakes (on a grander scale) since then?
I'll take the opinionated rantings of the Slashdot editors (with the subsequent opinionated rantings of the pro-MS lobby) over the non-news I see in the "respected" sources.
Because to a programmer/architect/sysadmin, the mere existence of these worms is mind-boggling. Imagine the largest-selling American car manufacturer building all of their models with the gas tank right behind the front bumper, or some such idiocy. Now you, as an automotive columnist (with some professional understanding of auto design), are forced to report every time one of these Hindenburgs ends up as a firey wreck.
It'd be bad enough if this happened in one model of car, but to see it happen year after year, when the company should know better, has to be somewhat irritating. I'll let MS slightly off the hook when a "legitimate" bug is found-- that is, one that might not have been directly anticipated when the product was being designed. But each of these worms exist as a result of MS's ongoing, dunderheaded ignorance of basic security issues. Windows scripting on as default? Minimal security in their email software? Preview panes that can automatically execute scripts?
So yes, the Slashdot editors' scorn is thoroughly justified in these cases. If you're looking for more objectivity in your reporting, there are other places to go. If you stuck to the reports I've seen in reputable newspapers, you wouldn't even have to suffer the notion of Microsoft as a responsible party. If you think that's the case, choose your news sources differently. Slashdot is run (and contributed to) by people who take this sort of stuff a little bit personally.
Yes, I'm sorry if my original post was confusing. Verizon is doing pretty well, especially compared to the more competitive Telecoms (AT&T, WorldCom). Nobody has ever convincingly argued that Verizon is well-managed (remember, this is GTE and Bell Atlantic we're talking about.) What V's got going for it is a monopoly, and the loads of reliable cash that brings in. And of course, the reflexive ability to use that cash to protect its own interests.
The major distinguishing characteristic of the Bells is that they're a legal monopoly. They can get away with a whole lot more than a company like IBM or even Microsoft because nobody has ever come up with a real plan for promoting competition in local service. You could break the Bells up, but then you'd just have a bunch of smaller monopolies (though I think that'd be a better situation than the MaBell-reborn behemoths that are taking shape in companies like Verizon.)
The lesson of the past few years is that legal monopolies do pretty well as long as nobody imposes too much change on them; for example, via Government intervention, or voluntary changes like PG&E made.
Well, it has gotten somewhat cheaper. But my answer to your question is: Because it cost a phenomenal amount of money to build out the fiber, and even more to maintain and operate it. One of the less well-advertised side effects of capitalism is that oversupply can lead to higher prices, as businesses are forced to raise per-unit prices to cover their debt and expenses.
Until the last-mile is really built out, long-distance data carriers know that they won't really have enough business to justify lowering prices much. In the mean time, those people who need to move data will be forced to settle for whatever price they can get.
Now, the above answer might not be completely accurate. But the inarguable bottom line is that carriers have a lot of dark fiber out there that may never see use. And even more debt that's not being paid back.
Even worse, if control over the last mile is split between the Baby Bells and a relatively small cable company like Comcast (which will probably be somewhat overextended following this purchase), don't look to see the wide area data business taking off any time soon. It'd take someone really aggressive to build out really high speed broadband connections (like fiber to the home) fast enough to make a major difference. The Bells have shown no interest in doing anything to upset their applecart, unless directly pressured by competition. Comcast simply won't have the cash. AT&T wanted to go in this direction, three years ago... But now they've completely dropped the ball.
To be fair, the Baby Bells aren't paragons of efficiency and brilliant management. The true moral of this story follows:
Stupidity + Competition = Disaster
Stupidity + Monopoly = Success beyond your wildest dreams.
For an example of the latter, take a look at Wall Street's darling Verizon, the lovechild of the two dumbest corporate monopolies ever set loose to roam over the land.
Or more accurately, the AT&T executives have realized that they can make out like bandits every time they split or merge-- regardless of how it affects the company.
I'm curious about what's left now that AT&T's spun off Wireless and Broadband. Long distance, as AT&T was so fond of telling us a couple years ago, is headed for the toilet in a few years. Wide area data networking is a overbuilt and likely to stay that way for a long time to come.
So what's the future for this company?
You're absolutely right. Problem is, there is no good business plan available for most sites that want to distribute content or news. If you run a TV/radio station or a newspaper with a regular audience in the millions, you can do quite well off of the advertising $$. If you run an even more popular website, you're going to make a fraction of that amount.
Some say the scarcity of advertising money is due to the limitations of the format. To a larger extent, thought, it's an artificial situation brought about by major advertisers' unwillingness to gamble on an unproven format. They have the money, so they say which formats live or die.
A good example of this is advertisers' unwillingness to experiment with time-shifted TV advertising. Right now it's well within the limits of technology to customize the advertising displayed to every viewer with a modern cable box or Tivo. But advertisers don't even want to experiment with this technology because they've got a very reliable system that works purely on the basis of what type of people tune in at a given time. Even though a lot of their money is being wasted on people with no interest in a given product.
That's business, and I understand your point. However, I do find it to be a shame that such a promising area of business is being starved to death as a result.
And no, Freenet isn't there yet.