Such as "pirated" software I see on the internet that, in the store, is worth $20.
But how many people use pirated versions of dirt cheap software? At that price, people would rather buy it and get the support and the knowledge that it isn't a trojan of some kind. The more expensive the software, the more people will use a pirated copy rather than paying retail. Ask Adobe.
This would be like deriving the cost of a piece of artwork through the actual cost of the paint.
No, because I am not relying on the cost of the media. It is more like costing the artwork by the square inch. The difference is that a song can stand alone, whereas a single square inch of the average painting can not.
I am calculating the cost of a quantifiable peice of the work based on the price of the entire work. My only assumption here is that each song on the CD is equally valuable. If the RIAA thinks that $12-$16 is a fair price for one song, why don't they charge that price for singles? CD singles are already a commercial failure at $3-$4.
Why have multiple points of potential failure when you can just have one?
Because putting your eggs in one basket is a bad idea. Sure, this is convenient for users: all your data is in one place, easy to change and maintain. Now, look at it from the point of view of an identity theif. One stop shopping. Now look at it from the point of view of law enforcement. One place to go to scrutinze every transaction that you make.
Personally, I prefer to have several accounts attached to different usernames, e-mail accounts etc. It doesn't prevent abuse, but it makes you a harder target to hit.
But do you think its okay to be dishonest and hypocritical as long as you ARE profiting from it? Ask an MS executive that question.
No. Both are equally detestable, from a moral standpoint.
This has nothing to do with Linux, but we seemed to be going in this direction anyways.
As far as this story goes, it has everything to do with Linux and nothing to do with M$! It is the Linux people who dragged M$ into a case that had no relation to them so that they could try to deflect attention from their own shortcomings.
Already this problem has been caught and is being dealt with.
And I suppose that by "being dealt with" you mean a bunch of people trying to deflect blame onto M$. Does dealing with a situation mean mitigating guilt and trying to drag down a party that is totaly unrelated to the case?
If people can get it for free (as in beer), they will. It's the american way. Why work for it when you can get it for free.
If that were the case, people would be getting a lot more for free. They aren't becuase most things are priced at a point where pirating them is not worth the trouble.
Why is $1.00 a fair price for a song?
Average out the average cost per song on the average CD and you will get something close to that. So, to answer your question, the RIAA thinks it is fair. Personally, I think that $1 is too much. Some might think that it is too little. Obviously, enough people agree that spending $12-$16 to hear the one song that they want is too much. Thus, Napster.
This is the reasoning of a thief.
How so? It basically says that if there is not enough demand to support the price of your product, you must either lower it or lose business. This is basic Economics. If you want to argue that Economics is comprised of the rationalizations of thieves, we may have something to agree on.
I believe Apache runs on the same platform as IIS.
But I believe that IIS only runs on M$ platforms, which makes it a more efficient target. The question is, of Apache's majority share how many installations run on Windows?
I think the main difference here is that we actually have confidence that this problem will be fixed
Unfortunately, your confidence is based on an assumption that should have prevented this from occuring. If Linux developers are so diligent, how did this situation come about in the first place?
Linux, a community of one. Funny how all those watchful eyes that are supposed to guarantee the integrity of the code missed this conveneint piece of theft.
"Hackers", as you call these jerks, do not target Microsoft because they're the most popular.
Depends on what you mean by popular. Are there more Apache web-servers? Sure. Are there more users of M$ software in general? Vastly. IIS is attacked because it runs on a platform that is more popular in general.
Plus a lot of people just hate microsoft in general.
I think that you have hit the nail on the head here. Microsoft is simply a high profile target, but it is also despised for it's arrogant, "our software is superior and everyone else sucks" attitide. Basically, their arrogance inspires people to try to take them down.
Unfortunately, I see more and more people in this forum with a similar attitude about the superiority of Linux and Open Source in general. I see a day very soon when people will get tired of kicking the M$ security dead horse. The real challenge will be in targeting Open Source alternatives. What hacker wouldn't want to be the first to bring Apache?
Then again, maybe Apache really is invulnerable to significant exploits.
The company selling the CD is charging whatever the market will bear.
If this were true, there would be no Napster. Again, the industry has lost the means to control the distribution of their product. If they don't lower the price to the point that the cost of developing alternative systems is no longer worth it, they will continue to lose business. At this point, swappers are paying the market value, $0. Surely there is a point above that which will accomodate both sides. If not, the music in question is not commercially viable.
no one forced you to buy the CD
No one forced the artists to release it either. So why should they expect to get a fair deal? If they don't think that they are properly compensated, or if they can convince their fans that their music is worth paying for, they can find other means of employment.
You admit that you merely want the song.
Right. The song. Not the filler that they use to pad the price. If $1 per song is fair, then $12 for 12 songs would be just as fair, right? This is the industries logic. Thus they take one song that people want to buy and bundle it with 11 that no one has heard or wants. This is just a way of charging $12 for the $1 worth of product that you want you want. Specious marketing logic at its most transparent.
How are CDs overpriced, you bought them didn't you?
If I want a song by a specific artist, I have no choice on where to purchase it, how it will be packaged, or what useless crap will be bundled with it to pad the price. This is not choice.
If they were overpriced someone would come along and offer a CD at a lesser price wouldn't they?
Who? Pirates? If this is some backhanded way of saying that most music these days is so generic that it is interchangeble within a given genre, I might agree with you. Otherwise, your argument is makes no sense.
If artists were willing to negotiate a fair price for their product, I would pay. The fact is that they rely on greedy corporations that assumed that they would always be one step ahead of the market in terms of technology. Until recently, they were able to use this (dare I say) monopoly on distribution to over-charge for music. As a result, the preception of the industry as a whole of the worth of their product is vastly over-inflated.
Taking food out of the mouths of artists? I have put more than my fair share into their mouths by paying for overpriced CDs. If they are starving, they should hit the road and play for live audiences. Can't fill a venue? Maybe they should find another line of work.
If they were smart, they would have called it a day and declared bankruptcy. As long as there is free music out there, I don't see them finding $26 million worth of demand for subscriptions.
Today we have millions of qualified(?) cookie cutter tech guys (and gals) out in the workforce. They've all pretty much had the same exposure to technology as they grew up and went to school. Basically, they're interchangable. I know this is a generalization, but it holds true for 99%.
What nonesense. You were treated with more respect because of scarcity. That has nothing to do with your qualifications(?), and certainly makes no statement about how they relate to those of techies who actually have to deal with competition. If anything, todays climate will produce even more true talent, since people today can't get away with cobbling a network together and coasting on the fact that no-one else will be able to figure out which paperclip needs to be replaced when something goes wrong. Technology today is transparent to more people than ever. This means that the only way to distinguish yourself is to be distinguishable. I dare say that this is an improvement.
Maybe you are just annoyed because these interchangeble cookies can do at 18 what it took you two careers to accomplish. Maybe you are scared about what they are gong to know by the time they are ready for their second careers. Maybe you should be.
It's about actually treating your company the same way you want to be treated.
What a ridiculous notion. Employees have no power when it comes to how they are treated by their employers. Particularly with companies that are under the thumb of absentee Boards of Directors and shareholders, employees are just a variable on the wrong side of an equation.
Did the tech boom spawn a bunch of self-centered opportunists? Yes. If they were the only ones suffering that would be fine. But people are getting laid off regardless of how they treated their jobs or their employers.
With all due respect, I think that you are overestimating the Governments powers here. Is there any demand for DeCSS on a CD? The fact is that no one but hackers are interested in it in the first place. How many average users are going to roll their own DVD player? Even if there were demand, it would be trivial to compile it into an easy to install executable and mail it to whomever requested it.
Again, my point is that the cat is already out of the bag. There are too many people with enough knowledge to circumvent any attempt to reign in technology. The best that the Feds can do is force people to develop ever more subtle forms of encryption and distribution. While I am not convinced that they aren't stupid enough to try it, I am confident that they will lose in the end.
Slashdot Mirror
Such as "pirated" software I see on the internet that, in the store, is worth $20.
But how many people use pirated versions of dirt cheap software? At that price, people would rather buy it and get the support and the knowledge that it isn't a trojan of some kind. The more expensive the software, the more people will use a pirated copy rather than paying retail. Ask Adobe.
This would be like deriving the cost of a piece of artwork through the actual cost of the paint.
No, because I am not relying on the cost of the media. It is more like costing the artwork by the square inch. The difference is that a song can stand alone, whereas a single square inch of the average painting can not.
I am calculating the cost of a quantifiable peice of the work based on the price of the entire work. My only assumption here is that each song on the CD is equally valuable. If the RIAA thinks that $12-$16 is a fair price for one song, why don't they charge that price for singles? CD singles are already a commercial failure at $3-$4.
Definitely an answer to passport/hailstorm.
And that answer is: "Me too!!!!"
Who defines morality? You?
Why have multiple points of potential failure when you can just have one?
Because putting your eggs in one basket is a bad idea. Sure, this is convenient for users: all your data is in one place, easy to change and maintain. Now, look at it from the point of view of an identity theif. One stop shopping. Now look at it from the point of view of law enforcement. One place to go to scrutinze every transaction that you make.
Personally, I prefer to have several accounts attached to different usernames, e-mail accounts etc. It doesn't prevent abuse, but it makes you a harder target to hit.
Two versions of software that no one wants to use! Thank god for competition!
just because the person who happened to notice it was a BSD developer
Maybe this kind of dishonesty and sloppiness is why he is a BSD developer instead of a Linux developer.
But do you think its okay to be dishonest and hypocritical as long as you ARE profiting from it? Ask an MS executive that question.
No. Both are equally detestable, from a moral standpoint.
This has nothing to do with Linux, but we seemed to be going in this direction anyways.
As far as this story goes, it has everything to do with Linux and nothing to do with M$! It is the Linux people who dragged M$ into a case that had no relation to them so that they could try to deflect attention from their own shortcomings.
cutting crap out and pasting other crap in.
I'll resist the urge to take this literally and say something uncivil.
Everyone makes mistakes, the important thing is fixing them.
This is true.
Already this problem has been caught and is being dealt with.
And I suppose that by "being dealt with" you mean a bunch of people trying to deflect blame onto M$. Does dealing with a situation mean mitigating guilt and trying to drag down a party that is totaly unrelated to the case?
If people can get it for free (as in beer), they will. It's the american way. Why work for it when you can get it for free.
If that were the case, people would be getting a lot more for free. They aren't becuase most things are priced at a point where pirating them is not worth the trouble.
Why is $1.00 a fair price for a song?
Average out the average cost per song on the average CD and you will get something close to that. So, to answer your question, the RIAA thinks it is fair. Personally, I think that $1 is too much. Some might think that it is too little. Obviously, enough people agree that spending $12-$16 to hear the one song that they want is too much. Thus, Napster.
This is the reasoning of a thief.
How so? It basically says that if there is not enough demand to support the price of your product, you must either lower it or lose business. This is basic Economics. If you want to argue that Economics is comprised of the rationalizations of thieves, we may have something to agree on.
I believe Apache runs on the same platform as IIS.
But I believe that IIS only runs on M$ platforms, which makes it a more efficient target. The question is, of Apache's majority share how many installations run on Windows?
And considering how much they bitch about *that*...
If they comply with the licences attached to code they incorporate, they have every right to.
Do you think it is okay to be dishonest and hypocritical as long as you are not profiting from it?
Scratch that, I already have your answer.
But what if both were software developers, but only Person A was a hypocrite?
I think the main difference here is that we actually have confidence that this problem will be fixed
Unfortunately, your confidence is based on an assumption that should have prevented this from occuring. If Linux developers are so diligent, how did this situation come about in the first place?
A Linux developer fucked up here.
Linux, a community of one. Funny how all those watchful eyes that are supposed to guarantee the integrity of the code missed this conveneint piece of theft.
"Hackers", as you call these jerks, do not target Microsoft because they're the most popular.
Depends on what you mean by popular. Are there more Apache web-servers? Sure. Are there more users of M$ software in general? Vastly. IIS is attacked because it runs on a platform that is more popular in general.
Plus a lot of people just hate microsoft in general.
I think that you have hit the nail on the head here. Microsoft is simply a high profile target, but it is also despised for it's arrogant, "our software is superior and everyone else sucks" attitide. Basically, their arrogance inspires people to try to take them down.
Unfortunately, I see more and more people in this forum with a similar attitude about the superiority of Linux and Open Source in general. I see a day very soon when people will get tired of kicking the M$ security dead horse. The real challenge will be in targeting Open Source alternatives. What hacker wouldn't want to be the first to bring Apache?
Then again, maybe Apache really is invulnerable to significant exploits.
The company selling the CD is charging whatever the market will bear.
If this were true, there would be no Napster. Again, the industry has lost the means to control the distribution of their product. If they don't lower the price to the point that the cost of developing alternative systems is no longer worth it, they will continue to lose business. At this point, swappers are paying the market value, $0. Surely there is a point above that which will accomodate both sides. If not, the music in question is not commercially viable.
no one forced you to buy the CD
No one forced the artists to release it either. So why should they expect to get a fair deal? If they don't think that they are properly compensated, or if they can convince their fans that their music is worth paying for, they can find other means of employment.
You admit that you merely want the song.
Right. The song. Not the filler that they use to pad the price. If $1 per song is fair, then $12 for 12 songs would be just as fair, right? This is the industries logic. Thus they take one song that people want to buy and bundle it with 11 that no one has heard or wants. This is just a way of charging $12 for the $1 worth of product that you want you want. Specious marketing logic at its most transparent.
At least they didn't take the typical dot-com role and just close shop.
Instead, they chose dot-com failure option B and sold out to the old-economy industry they were supposed to replace.
Frankly, I think that closing up shop would have been the respectable way to go.
How are CDs overpriced, you bought them didn't you?
If I want a song by a specific artist, I have no choice on where to purchase it, how it will be packaged, or what useless crap will be bundled with it to pad the price. This is not choice.
If they were overpriced someone would come along and offer a CD at a lesser price wouldn't they?
Who? Pirates? If this is some backhanded way of saying that most music these days is so generic that it is interchangeble within a given genre, I might agree with you. Otherwise, your argument is makes no sense.
If artists were willing to negotiate a fair price for their product, I would pay. The fact is that they rely on greedy corporations that assumed that they would always be one step ahead of the market in terms of technology. Until recently, they were able to use this (dare I say) monopoly on distribution to over-charge for music. As a result, the preception of the industry as a whole of the worth of their product is vastly over-inflated.
Taking food out of the mouths of artists? I have put more than my fair share into their mouths by paying for overpriced CDs. If they are starving, they should hit the road and play for live audiences. Can't fill a venue? Maybe they should find another line of work.
If they were smart, they would have called it a day and declared bankruptcy. As long as there is free music out there, I don't see them finding $26 million worth of demand for subscriptions.
Today we have millions of qualified(?) cookie cutter tech guys (and gals) out in the workforce. They've all pretty much had the same exposure to technology as they grew up and went to school. Basically, they're interchangable. I know this is a generalization, but it holds true for 99%.
What nonesense. You were treated with more respect because of scarcity. That has nothing to do with your qualifications(?), and certainly makes no statement about how they relate to those of techies who actually have to deal with competition. If anything, todays climate will produce even more true talent, since people today can't get away with cobbling a network together and coasting on the fact that no-one else will be able to figure out which paperclip needs to be replaced when something goes wrong. Technology today is transparent to more people than ever. This means that the only way to distinguish yourself is to be distinguishable. I dare say that this is an improvement.
Maybe you are just annoyed because these interchangeble cookies can do at 18 what it took you two careers to accomplish. Maybe you are scared about what they are gong to know by the time they are ready for their second careers. Maybe you should be.
It's about actually treating your company the same way you want to be treated.
What a ridiculous notion. Employees have no power when it comes to how they are treated by their employers. Particularly with companies that are under the thumb of absentee Boards of Directors and shareholders, employees are just a variable on the wrong side of an equation.
Did the tech boom spawn a bunch of self-centered opportunists? Yes. If they were the only ones suffering that would be fine. But people are getting laid off regardless of how they treated their jobs or their employers.
With all due respect, I think that you are overestimating the Governments powers here. Is there any demand for DeCSS on a CD? The fact is that no one but hackers are interested in it in the first place. How many average users are going to roll their own DVD player? Even if there were demand, it would be trivial to compile it into an easy to install executable and mail it to whomever requested it.
Again, my point is that the cat is already out of the bag. There are too many people with enough knowledge to circumvent any attempt to reign in technology. The best that the Feds can do is force people to develop ever more subtle forms of encryption and distribution. While I am not convinced that they aren't stupid enough to try it, I am confident that they will lose in the end.