Problem is: Microsoft was "conquering" empty land. In such case it is just sufficient to offer product good enought that people are willing to pay for it.
The "new offering" you're proposing (which is alredy there IMO in the form of some Linux distros) have to "conquer" not empty land, but land conquered, occupied and aggresively defended by Microsoft. In other words, if you just offer better bang for better money, users still have to also consider what to do about their existing infrastructure based on Microsoft's producs.
Those two scenarios are very different. Both for consumers and both for wannabe providers of this "new offering". Not even mentioning that Microsoft still holds the monopoly possition and is thus still much more capable in defending its position for quite a long time.
So, your suggestion is very good and welcome, but here's some test for you: Convince your president to:
demolish his existing residency
clear up the land previously occupied by that residency
buy construction of new, better then previous residency and for very good price from you
wait untill you do the work
pay you for the work
All that while others expect from him to function as ussual while the demolition and new construction is in progress (and the president is "homeless"). And we assume there is no "previous maintainer" of the current residency actively opposing your work to make your test easier.
we may be unable to incorporate future enhancements to the GNU/Linux operating system into our software
Which is precisely what some supporters of GPL, want.
I know, it's hard to do business while using GPL software as a core.
But who said that all developers of GPL-ed software are happy that someone is using their work to make money without giving something back to the developers and without following some... say phylosophical ideas which are behind the license?
To make the business based on Free Software and/or Open Source really successfull and sustainable, it is not sufficient to please only shareholders of the company.
IMO same applies not to just GPL-ed software, but to some degree also to so called commons: air, water, culture,...
do nothing + wait: Eventualy someone will hopefully fix things also for you.
pros: cheap
cons: you may weait very very long
complain to your political representative(s) + wait: It will most probably result in some more money being handed to your current ISP monopoly (part of that "more money" will be also from you - your taxes). In a goog case, it will get you a fix sooner than in previous case but I suspect the contrary: you end up waiting longer.
pros: politicians will do your job but...
cons:... it will cost you more than previous case
complain to your ISP + wait: Essentialy same but slightly more expensive as previous case because ISP will IMO mostly try to loby (your) polititians for you using more additional money from you.
pros: ISP and politicians will do your work but again...
cons:... it will cost you more than previous case (lobyists do not work for free:)
do something yourself: Will give you results without spending money on politicians or your current ISP which is not able to satisfy you. But... see cons.
pros: Your results will be proportional to the amount of work and money you invest into your work.
cons: You have to know something about networking and you have to pay for some gear, some constructions, maybe even rent some land/office etc. depending on how a big gap you have to bridge from your place to nearest "Internat heaven".
find guys in your area with same problems and do something about it together: All the stuff from previous case applies but... see pros and cons. IMO this will give you better results than all the previous options but it greatly depends on people, you location,...
pros: you are required to know less (but less != nothing) than in previous case assuming combined knowledge of your group has sufficient level
cons: you are required to spend less (but less != nothing) than in previous case because the costs are split between more people
wait + try to limit the monopoly powers in your county: This will essentialy give you same thing as previous case but by some commercial entity which (compared to previous case) will give you same result but for less work, less money and shorter time - all thanks to higher expertise of you "next good ISP" (given company or companies will be trying to get you as customer based on their much greater expertise and desire to satisfy you than your current ISP).
pros: better service for less money than your current ISP
cons: you have to somehow pressure your politicians
In my case, if I'm really unsatisfied with current commercial offerings, I'm either trying to engage with some existing local comunity and interconnect with them or wait for better commercial offering.
Last time I did it, I waited two years (boycotting fixed line monopoly company) to get a cable connection (from cable TV operator) - in the mean time accessing web only from work and in realy imporant cases using GRPS service from my mobile operator (it was quite cheap but really slow). Served me hopefully well for the price I was willing to pay and with the pain I was willing to endure and without supporting the monopoly company.
But if they try to litigate this issues and thus initiate patent war comparable to nuclear conflict, then (thanks to crosslicensing) big companies survive (with some more or less huge legal fees to pay) but a lot of small and medium businesses will go under (along with some OSS projects, thus furher negatively impacting big companies, for which they subcontract).
And while small and medium businesses are each... well small and medium, in sum they account for a lot of employment and GDP. And if governments (mainly ministries of finance and ministiries of work/social services/whatever) notice spikes in unemployment and state income, they will for sure act in any way they see fit.
It may even inspire some trade wars (to pressure U.S. to "do something with Microsoft") or maybe even some "preventive military strikes" on targets in Redmond.:|
In sum, mess alredy started (and long time ago). But now it is surfacing. And the only question is: how much it escalates?
For something like a plastic toy that my daughter is going to play with for a year, it's fine.
There are a lot of toys from my childhood which are still usable and can whithstand another round of playing by my doughter now in essentialy same condition - and good condition (with the exception of toys meant for older children then she currently is - that is undersandable).
But the stuff we buy now ussualy does not survive even first round of playing without major damage.
And I do not think my dougter is playing somehow differently that I at her age.
So that means current stuff is junk - it is not what it is advertised to be: toy for children.
Last thought: What do our children learn from playing with toys which breaks easily and often and are replaced easily and often?
Good consumerism?
So essentialy employees are buying some insurance from their employers. Pay is being aranged by further diverting some portions of employees income away from him.
Question is: Are there better insurance policies available?
Pardon my ignorance, I'm not a Windows user for quite ages, but would not switching to some Vista Server edition (if it is or will be available) solve the problem?
If we suspect correctly that Digital Restriction Management is the culprit of bad performance, it should not be a problem on server editions because including it on servers would realy hurt server performance, hurt benchmarks and generaly hurt Windows server sales.
It is (or would be) for Microsoft a though choice IMO:
either include DRM on servers thus kill Windows server market, or
do not include DRM on servers thus demonstrating clearly what is hurting performance and driving desktop users towards server editions (or other desktop solutions).
customer - is essentialy educated and makes informed choices
consumer - just consumes what's given, no questions asked, with just mild rebelions when he things some of his god-given rights has been violated (after which he is "educated" and new set of rights - smaller one - is introduced)
IMO, american/western style free-market economy successfully reeducated people from customers to consumers - that's what better for corporations (just give us your money and take whatever shit we give you in return).
But the problem is, those consumers are also employees at the same time.
And you can't have high-value-added economy with only dumb people working in it. Such employees can't be well paid thus they can't spend much.
That in itself is a negative-feedback-loop. This "dumbing down" is IMO a problem and this feedback is a corective action.
Those companies either reeducate their employees/customers or completely relocate to some other country where there is lower ration of dumb-asses in population.
From the peoples point-of-view: do not support companies which are trying to dumb you down - you'll end up stupid, unemployed, without a land and unable to buy stuff from such companies.
You wrote your name incorrectly, Mr. Innocent Bystander.
But realy, how many people complained agains Flushed Away? You know, children will see that "flushing" scene and then they'll certainly try that themselves, for example to see that "sewer city".
Your second scenario seems better. Better for $PRESIDENT and $EXECUTIVE_BRANCH_POLITICIANS.
Because in such case they successfully eliminated a lot of power from the people and can do as they please. For example even do some terrorist attack themselves from time to time to for example "remind the people" as to why it is important to fight agains terrorism by all means available etc.
They should be held to higher standards than ANY corporation, school, or private organization. We entrust them with our lives, shouldn't they be required to prove they can handle that trust?
They are proving it (or trying to) when thay are pleading you to vote for them.
So for example when you vote for president, you should make sure he proves to you you can trust him plus make sure he proves to you that you can trust also the people he's going to appoint (to positions which are not granted based on elections). Or you just trust him to appoint good people (good for you).
Or at least that's the theory of how it should work.
I assume you mean something like Piracy Built the Romanian IT Industry. Same theme IMO applies also to other countries with some differences as to the exact amount of piracy, the time it happened, the result it made, etc.
Maybe the video in question was not FUD at the time it was created. Creators did not know yet what the piracy will lead to so maybe they honestly believed that piracy is destroying the future. But now we know, based on what we see around us and also based on multiple studies and articles about "software...", "music..." and "video piracy".
(I put "piracy" in quotes because some argue that copying mentioned material is not piracy as per dictionary definitions - see multiple debates for example here on./ - given the controversy over various other language abuses, like cracker/hacker, idiot/mentaly chalanged,... I'm not decided yet but I'm sympathetic to such "language purism").
I did read you post, but a) being the lazy one and b) not being very familiar with peer-reviewed research I decided to better ask for link thus also mitigating the risk of getting wrong link from search engines.
You may even count me as a supporter of such feature - I may not see use of it for myself but I can certainly see that someone else may like it very much.
I have been thinking lately about "copyright pollution" where the copyrighted works of others gets in our heads and pollutes them to to point where what then comes out of us is "tainted" as it were.
I have same fealing about laws in general in so called "modern free-market driven democracies": I think it is alredy a fact that growing up in such a country to the age of 18 means you are for sure a criminal - breaking multiple laws in the past 18 years thus beaing under constant threat of being jailed (if not alredy in there).
And it looks like intentional product of those who set-up such "law mine field" because - to quote (with mistakes and without proper attributions, what a thief I am:) - "government in free society has no power over citizens, it has power only over criminals".
By buying at a BIG store you get very good price (for now, in most cases). But you also give them a lot of control. Because your need for low prices may end-up with all the local shops go bancrupt and you being unable to buy anywhere alse but at BIG store. And if that happens, how big discount you expect to be getting? You can't go anywhere else, why should you get any? It would be much better (for BIG store) to even charge premium.
To give some example so we can imagine such situation better: price of Microsoft Windows Vista, price of gas, price od CDs,...
Freedom costs. And discounts are not given for doing nothing.:)
Is it possible to get your data better treatment under such a protocol by falsely labeling it?
To answer UbuntuDupe and to give additional information ontop of jZnat's post:
Yes, you can abuse network and get yourself a better treatment by falsely labeling your traffic.
Of course it will work only until everybody else start falsely labeling their traffic too which will at the end work as if there is no QoS (i.e. like today, but for greater price - QoS have to be implemlementd in network equipment and then this equipment will be processing QoS).
you have machine which listens on port 25 or accept SMTP connections on any other port and
you are suspected by [them] for something and they want to nail you down
they just apply "logic", "common sense", "we have to protect children", "we're at war against terrorism" and whatever and based on [1] it wil be "plain" and "beyond doubt" that you did receive some messages, did not log them, broken at least one law and you are terrorist, child molester,...
It does not matter that you were maybe just upset about your ISPs mail services and unfortunately do not have enought disk space to log everything on your own mail server as they expect you to.
IIRC Freud wrote something along the lines that inteligence of the crowd is lower than maybe even that of the dumbest individual in the group. Politicians in democracies are (to some degree) just extensions of the crowd (big crowd). I think we may expect loginc and inteligence from them (politicians) but if they do not used them, they certainly wont be critizied for this ommision by the the crowd they represent (lead or whatever).
There is maybe little misunderstanding: you stated your confusion about some claim people made about Microsoft. I replied ttrying to point out possible (I stress: possible) answer and possible example supporting such answer. I did not stated whether I agree with "Microsoft is evil" or not.
Now, if I understand properly you reply, I think you think I think Microsoft is evil. Well, I dont know whether you're right. I'm quite sure I did not make any statement regarding my perception of Microsoft in this thread. I made some statement along those lines elsewhere: see my post to the article Why Does Everyone Hate Microsoft?.
So back to this thread: if some actions are to be rightfuly percieved as evil, is it necessary to do this evil things intentionaly?
Well, if you judge yourself, your statement is valid (as you wrote it). So I agree that in such case the answer is yes.
But if others are judging your actions (or mine, or whomever), the answer is IMO no. Why? Other has no way of knowing your (mine,...) intentions, they can only see what has been done and what are the effects.
Then, if you want to know, why some people think that Microsoft is evil, you have to ask them.
For starters, take a look as that article mentioned above. If you engage in discussion there I think peole will respond even if the article is alredy more than one month old.
Or, if you want to be precise, post your own "Ask Slashdot" question, because "Why Does Everyone Hate Microsoft?" is not same as "Why do you think Microsoft is evil?". Or we can continue the debate here.
I'm looking forward to that (prefferably specialized "Ask Slashdot" post, as that way more peole will participate). You may end up making clear some misconceptions and things will be better - in Microsoft and in the world in general.
Slashdot Mirror
Problem is: Microsoft was "conquering" empty land. In such case it is just sufficient to offer product good enought that people are willing to pay for it.
The "new offering" you're proposing (which is alredy there IMO in the form of some Linux distros) have to "conquer" not empty land, but land conquered, occupied and aggresively defended by Microsoft. In other words, if you just offer better bang for better money, users still have to also consider what to do about their existing infrastructure based on Microsoft's producs.
Those two scenarios are very different. Both for consumers and both for wannabe providers of this "new offering". Not even mentioning that Microsoft still holds the monopoly possition and is thus still much more capable in defending its position for quite a long time.
So, your suggestion is very good and welcome, but here's some test for you: Convince your president to:
All that while others expect from him to function as ussual while the demolition and new construction is in progress (and the president is "homeless"). And we assume there is no "previous maintainer" of the current residency actively opposing your work to make your test easier.
Which is precisely what some supporters of GPL, want.
I know, it's hard to do business while using GPL software as a core.
But who said that all developers of GPL-ed software are happy that someone is using their work to make money without giving something back to the developers and without following some ... say phylosophical ideas which are behind the license?
To make the business based on Free Software and/or Open Source really successfull and sustainable, it is not sufficient to please only shareholders of the company.
IMO same applies not to just GPL-ed software, but to some degree also to so called commons: air, water, culture, ...
Your options:
pros: cheap
cons: you may weait very very long
pros: politicians will do your job but
cons:
pros: ISP and politicians will do your work but again
cons:
pros: Your results will be proportional to the amount of work and money you invest into your work.
cons: You have to know something about networking and you have to pay for some gear, some constructions, maybe even rent some land/office etc. depending on how a big gap you have to bridge from your place to nearest "Internat heaven".
pros: you are required to know less (but less != nothing) than in previous case assuming combined knowledge of your group has sufficient level
cons: you are required to spend less (but less != nothing) than in previous case because the costs are split between more people
pros: better service for less money than your current ISP
cons: you have to somehow pressure your politicians
In my case, if I'm really unsatisfied with current commercial offerings, I'm either trying to engage with some existing local comunity and interconnect with them or wait for better commercial offering.
Last time I did it, I waited two years (boycotting fixed line monopoly company) to get a cable connection (from cable TV operator) - in the mean time accessing web only from work and in realy imporant cases using GRPS service from my mobile operator (it was quite cheap but really slow). Served me hopefully well for the price I was willing to pay and with the pain I was willing to endure and without supporting the monopoly company.
I think anti-trust wont be invoked.
But if they try to litigate this issues and thus initiate patent war comparable to nuclear conflict, then (thanks to crosslicensing) big companies survive (with some more or less huge legal fees to pay) but a lot of small and medium businesses will go under (along with some OSS projects, thus furher negatively impacting big companies, for which they subcontract).
And while small and medium businesses are each ... well small and medium, in sum they account for a lot of employment and GDP. And if governments (mainly ministries of finance and ministiries of work/social services/whatever) notice spikes in unemployment and state income, they will for sure act in any way they see fit.
It may even inspire some trade wars (to pressure U.S. to "do something with Microsoft") or maybe even some "preventive military strikes" on targets in Redmond. :|
In sum, mess alredy started (and long time ago). But now it is surfacing. And the only question is: how much it escalates?
tomstdenis is right. :)
So the RIAA realy should talk to MSFT.
Oww wait, giving RIAA ideas, any ideas, is not good, right?
There are a lot of toys from my childhood which are still usable and can whithstand another round of playing by my doughter now in essentialy same condition - and good condition (with the exception of toys meant for older children then she currently is - that is undersandable).
But the stuff we buy now ussualy does not survive even first round of playing without major damage.
And I do not think my dougter is playing somehow differently that I at her age.
So that means current stuff is junk - it is not what it is advertised to be: toy for children.
Last thought: What do our children learn from playing with toys which breaks easily and often and are replaced easily and often? Good consumerism?
You mean Idiocracy?
I'm still undecided whether it is mainly entertainment or very seriously meant warning. I'm just quite sure it is not both. :)
So essentialy employees are buying some insurance from their employers. Pay is being aranged by further diverting some portions of employees income away from him.
Question is: Are there better insurance policies available?
Like commercial insurance companies, savings, ...?
Pardon my ignorance, I'm not a Windows user for quite ages, but would not switching to some Vista Server edition (if it is or will be available) solve the problem?
If we suspect correctly that Digital Restriction Management is the culprit of bad performance, it should not be a problem on server editions because including it on servers would realy hurt server performance, hurt benchmarks and generaly hurt Windows server sales.
It is (or would be) for Microsoft a though choice IMO:
So the solution is banning all on-line shops?
For the sake of this post lets define following:
IMO, american/western style free-market economy successfully reeducated people from customers to consumers - that's what better for corporations (just give us your money and take whatever shit we give you in return).
But the problem is, those consumers are also employees at the same time.
And you can't have high-value-added economy with only dumb people working in it. Such employees can't be well paid thus they can't spend much.
That in itself is a negative-feedback-loop. This "dumbing down" is IMO a problem and this feedback is a corective action.
Those companies either reeducate their employees/customers or completely relocate to some other country where there is lower ration of dumb-asses in population.
From the peoples point-of-view: do not support companies which are trying to dumb you down - you'll end up stupid, unemployed, without a land and unable to buy stuff from such companies.
You wrote your name incorrectly, Mr. Innocent Bystander.
But realy, how many people complained agains Flushed Away? You know, children will see that "flushing" scene and then they'll certainly try that themselves, for example to see that "sewer city".
Your second scenario seems better. Better for $PRESIDENT and $EXECUTIVE_BRANCH_POLITICIANS.
Because in such case they successfully eliminated a lot of power from the people and can do as they please. For example even do some terrorist attack themselves from time to time to for example "remind the people" as to why it is important to fight agains terrorism by all means available etc.
Of course quite a lot of people alredy were thinking abount such scenario so as to not post too long a list I pick examples from the "entertaning pool": 1984, Animal farm, Fahrenheit 451, Brazil, Æon Flux, Enemy of the state, ...
They are proving it (or trying to) when thay are pleading you to vote for them.
So for example when you vote for president, you should make sure he proves to you you can trust him plus make sure he proves to you that you can trust also the people he's going to appoint (to positions which are not granted based on elections). Or you just trust him to appoint good people (good for you).
Or at least that's the theory of how it should work.
I assume you mean something like Piracy Built the Romanian IT Industry. Same theme IMO applies also to other countries with some differences as to the exact amount of piracy, the time it happened, the result it made, etc.
Maybe the video in question was not FUD at the time it was created. Creators did not know yet what the piracy will lead to so maybe they honestly believed that piracy is destroying the future. But now we know, based on what we see around us and also based on multiple studies and articles about "software ...", "music ..." and "video piracy".
(I put "piracy" in quotes because some argue that copying mentioned material is not piracy as per dictionary definitions - see multiple debates for example here on ./ - given the controversy over various other language abuses, like cracker/hacker, idiot/mentaly chalanged, ... I'm not decided yet but I'm sympathetic to such "language purism").
Thank you for link.
I did read you post, but a) being the lazy one and b) not being very familiar with peer-reviewed research I decided to better ask for link thus also mitigating the risk of getting wrong link from search engines.
Thanks again.
Contact ./ and ask for that feature.
You may even count me as a supporter of such feature - I may not see use of it for myself but I can certainly see that someone else may like it very much.
Nice one, thanks. :>
I have same fealing about laws in general in so called "modern free-market driven democracies": I think it is alredy a fact that growing up in such a country to the age of 18 means you are for sure a criminal - breaking multiple laws in the past 18 years thus beaing under constant threat of being jailed (if not alredy in there).
And it looks like intentional product of those who set-up such "law mine field" because - to quote (with mistakes and without proper attributions, what a thief I am :) - "government in free society has no power over citizens, it has power only over criminals".
To build upon what you wrote:
By buying at a BIG store you get very good price (for now, in most cases). But you also give them a lot of control. Because your need for low prices may end-up with all the local shops go bancrupt and you being unable to buy anywhere alse but at BIG store. And if that happens, how big discount you expect to be getting? You can't go anywhere else, why should you get any? It would be much better (for BIG store) to even charge premium.
To give some example so we can imagine such situation better: price of Microsoft Windows Vista, price of gas, price od CDs, ...
Freedom costs. And discounts are not given for doing nothing. :)
Do you have any links to such research?
Thank you in advance.
To answer UbuntuDupe and to give additional information ontop of jZnat's post:
Yes, you can abuse network and get yourself a better treatment by falsely labeling your traffic.
Of course it will work only until everybody else start falsely labeling their traffic too which will at the end work as if there is no QoS (i.e. like today, but for greater price - QoS have to be implemlementd in network equipment and then this equipment will be processing QoS).
Assuming:
they just apply "logic", "common sense", "we have to protect children", "we're at war against terrorism" and whatever and based on [1] it wil be "plain" and "beyond doubt" that you did receive some messages, did not log them, broken at least one law and you are terrorist, child molester, ...
It does not matter that you were maybe just upset about your ISPs mail services and unfortunately do not have enought disk space to log everything on your own mail server as they expect you to.
IIRC Freud wrote something along the lines that inteligence of the crowd is lower than maybe even that of the dumbest individual in the group. Politicians in democracies are (to some degree) just extensions of the crowd (big crowd). I think we may expect loginc and inteligence from them (politicians) but if they do not used them, they certainly wont be critizied for this ommision by the the crowd they represent (lead or whatever).
Looking at my post history, I'm maybe becomning "The Saying Guy" but ...
... as the saying goes:
If you lend $10 to someone, it's his problem.
If you lend $10'000'000 to someone, it's your problem.
So, the saying tends to support you suggestion.
Not that I encurage amaricans to do what you wrote ...
There is maybe little misunderstanding: you stated your confusion about some claim people made about Microsoft. I replied ttrying to point out possible (I stress: possible) answer and possible example supporting such answer. I did not stated whether I agree with "Microsoft is evil" or not.
Now, if I understand properly you reply, I think you think I think Microsoft is evil. Well, I dont know whether you're right. I'm quite sure I did not make any statement regarding my perception of Microsoft in this thread. I made some statement along those lines elsewhere: see my post to the article Why Does Everyone Hate Microsoft?.
So back to this thread: if some actions are to be rightfuly percieved as evil, is it necessary to do this evil things intentionaly?
Well, if you judge yourself, your statement is valid (as you wrote it). So I agree that in such case the answer is yes.
But if others are judging your actions (or mine, or whomever), the answer is IMO no. Why? Other has no way of knowing your (mine, ...) intentions, they can only see what has been done and what are the effects.
Then, if you want to know, why some people think that Microsoft is evil, you have to ask them.
For starters, take a look as that article mentioned above. If you engage in discussion there I think peole will respond even if the article is alredy more than one month old.
Or, if you want to be precise, post your own "Ask Slashdot" question, because "Why Does Everyone Hate Microsoft?" is not same as "Why do you think Microsoft is evil?". Or we can continue the debate here.
I'm looking forward to that (prefferably specialized "Ask Slashdot" post, as that way more peole will participate). You may end up making clear some misconceptions and things will be better - in Microsoft and in the world in general.