Aren't companies legally obliged to try to maximise profits? I seem to recall this being used to justify bad behaviour, why isn't it used for good behaviour? Well, I don't know if that is true really...sure they have a long term obligation to shareholders, but in the case of bad behaviour, choosing the "bad" route may lessen profits in the long term if it harms their reputation.
As for your "good behaviour" scenario...well, you haven't exactly offered proof that going DRM free will maximize their profits, except with regard to your purchases specifically. Not every music consumer happens to be a slashdot-reading anti-DRM advocate who makes purchasing decisions based on principles.
Not trying to defend them, and I am with you in that I only buy iTunes plus stuff anymore for the same reasons....but I think implying they are legally obligated to go DRM free due to fiduciary responsibility to shareholders is quite an extreme stretch.
Wow you are right, we could save all kinds of money if we just eliminated police, the court system and the prison system. It's a free country anyway....if I want to rob the 7-11 at gunpoint, who is the government to try to control me otherwise?
(and especially this kind of research, which I'm sure is using up a massive chunk of our budget)
Well 1 billion years is still 1.8 million times the span of time from the invention of the printing press to the invention of the iPhone. So that doesn't seem unreasonable to think we might have a chance to get our shit together.
We can't even get off this damned rock yet Last I heard, we did make it to the adjacent rock not all that long ago.
I doubt the article is seriously implying we should be planning for anything. But still, I think you a being presumptuois so think the death of the sun would terminate humankind (or our robotic decendents). That's an awful long time from now, we've come up with a lot of technology in the last hundred years, imagine what we can have in a billion or two.
I mean, given that we've probably got another, say, 20 billion years till the information goes away, I guess I don't really feel the need to mark it as high priority on my to-do list.
I just really hope that there aren't any scientists that truly believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is exactly what is happening out there. Never met a scientist that thinks that way. But the religious folks that do think that way outnumber scientists 100 to 1.
Good you aren't running Apple. The smartest decision Apple ever made was to make iTunes/iPod work with windows....until then iPod was nothing but a niche product.
Anyone willing to pay $500+ for a phone will certainly pay $400 or less for some entry-level iMac device. Wow. So, what you are saying is anyone willing to pay $500 for something will also be willing to pay $900 for it? What exactly are you trying to say here?
Personally I think the best way to increase Mac market share is to get Windows users using (and hopefully enjoying) Apple products. Your "all or nothing" approach would not only NOT help Mac market share, but would certainly kill the iPhone by restricting it to 1/10th the market.
Oh, that's known as range voting. "Ranked" means putting them in order, and that goes beyond putting them in order, it actually gives each a value. It is just like approval, except it allows you to, in essense, decrease the weight of your vote. There is no strategic reason to vote with anything but zero or 100 in range voting, so doing so is like saying "make my vote count less".
Condorcet may be complicated to explain, but one thing it isn't is complicated to know how to best vote, since voting honestly and voting strategically are, except in the absolutely most contrived circumstances, identical.
How is that "exploting"? Well, any more than slashdot is "exploiting" you and me, since we are working to provide content and they are making money off us. And google is exploiting people who put up web pages. And, well...you could apply it to just about anything on the web where people participate without making money, while the site shows ads.
They are providing a simple service, and charging for it (it does cost them money to program and host it, you know). They assume those using it, whether asking or answering questions, are there by choice and are enjoying it.
What you describe is not ranked approval voting, but Borda count, which has some big problems. If I want to have the best outcome, I wouldn't want to rank, say, Nader first, Kerry second, then Bush last in your system (assuming that is my true preference), because ranking Kerry second doesn't give him as many points to beat Bush as he would have if I ranked him first. So strategically, knowing Kerry has a greater chance of winning, I would still be smart to vote Kerry first. Therefore Nader is still hurting Kerry by running, and parties are still needed to try eliminate similar candidates.
I do agree, that Condorcet has some problems as far as seeming complex.
Actually, organizing to avoid fragmenting is what causes partisanship. Duvergers law.
Condorcet and/or approval voting solves this problem, but until we have that, we're stuck with partisanship and all the screwiness of plurality elections.
Given that ajax techniques were pretty much non-existant in 98, yep, it would have been considered innovative. Probably "nearly a decade ahead of its time" innovative.
I find it amusing (well, "annoying" is probably a better word) the way people, who have presumably never innovated anything of note in their lives, love to declare what other people have done to be "non-innovative". Why didn't you produce it for us in the time between 98 and now, if it was so easy and obvious?
They probably should have said "unwanted cell death" was the definition of "unwanted apoptosis". Since what they are talking about is stopping the sort of apoptosis that is problematic.
(mustn't it, in order to exist in life as prevalently as it does?) Not necessarily. Cancer is prevalent, but it is not a function for survival. Well, not survival of the host anyway.
They don't recommend that as yet. However, it seems like you'd get more milage out of recommending vaccinnating the ones who can be most directly hurt by the disease.
I'm not sure he was trying to be funny. There was a very real possibility that people would not buy an iPod in the last few months, because they knew the iPhone was on the way and it would make their iPod seem outdated. I know that for me, after seeing the iPhone demonstrated, iPods seem less exciting and cool.
I think it is significant that iPod sales have not seemed to be negatively affected by the iPhone announcement.
It's not just more Windows users than Linux users, its that most Linux users wouldn't run it anyway, presumably because they are sure that the software sends your private files back to Google, where its employees sift through them and make fun of you or something.
I'd rather have two 800 pound gorillas than just one. Competition is good.
Anyway, I just don't see the comparison. Size isn't the issue. Google doesn't have a network monopoly, which is the big difference between Microsoft and Google. If I want to stop using Google tomorrow, I can switch to a competitor without any downsides -- other than the competitor might not be as good. (example: gmail lets me forward my mail to a new account, use a non-gmail address, etc....they seem to go out of their way to NOT lock me in. That's a HUGE difference from the way Microsoft has always done business)
Slashdot Mirror
In the same sense that windmills change the climate by slowing down the wind, I suppose you are right.
You might get modded down as flamebait, but I wish I had points to mod you up.
As for your "good behaviour" scenario...well, you haven't exactly offered proof that going DRM free will maximize their profits, except with regard to your purchases specifically. Not every music consumer happens to be a slashdot-reading anti-DRM advocate who makes purchasing decisions based on principles.
Not trying to defend them, and I am with you in that I only buy iTunes plus stuff anymore for the same reasons....but I think implying they are legally obligated to go DRM free due to fiduciary responsibility to shareholders is quite an extreme stretch.
Wow you are right, we could save all kinds of money if we just eliminated police, the court system and the prison system. It's a free country anyway....if I want to rob the 7-11 at gunpoint, who is the government to try to control me otherwise?
(and especially this kind of research, which I'm sure is using up a massive chunk of our budget)
Well 1 billion years is still 1.8 million times the span of time from the invention of the printing press to the invention of the iPhone. So that doesn't seem unreasonable to think we might have a chance to get our shit together.
why the affadavit, which has been "released", is not printed in any of the articles?
Who assumed it would continue exponentially? With a couple of billion years, it can happen quite slowly, actually.
I doubt the article is seriously implying we should be planning for anything. But still, I think you a being presumptuois so think the death of the sun would terminate humankind (or our robotic decendents). That's an awful long time from now, we've come up with a lot of technology in the last hundred years, imagine what we can have in a billion or two.
Why again is that our responsibility?
I mean, given that we've probably got another, say, 20 billion years till the information goes away, I guess I don't really feel the need to mark it as high priority on my to-do list.
Actually its unlikely for me, as I am already 93 years old, you insensitive clod.
Lemme guess, religious wingnut?
by then, we'll be dead, which seems like the bigger problem.
Personally I think the best way to increase Mac market share is to get Windows users using (and hopefully enjoying) Apple products. Your "all or nothing" approach would not only NOT help Mac market share, but would certainly kill the iPhone by restricting it to 1/10th the market.
Oh, that's known as range voting. "Ranked" means putting them in order, and that goes beyond putting them in order, it actually gives each a value. It is just like approval, except it allows you to, in essense, decrease the weight of your vote. There is no strategic reason to vote with anything but zero or 100 in range voting, so doing so is like saying "make my vote count less".
Condorcet may be complicated to explain, but one thing it isn't is complicated to know how to best vote, since voting honestly and voting strategically are, except in the absolutely most contrived circumstances, identical.
How is that "exploting"? Well, any more than slashdot is "exploiting" you and me, since we are working to provide content and they are making money off us. And google is exploiting people who put up web pages. And, well...you could apply it to just about anything on the web where people participate without making money, while the site shows ads.
They are providing a simple service, and charging for it (it does cost them money to program and host it, you know). They assume those using it, whether asking or answering questions, are there by choice and are enjoying it.
What you describe is not ranked approval voting, but Borda count, which has some big problems. If I want to have the best outcome, I wouldn't want to rank, say, Nader first, Kerry second, then Bush last in your system (assuming that is my true preference), because ranking Kerry second doesn't give him as many points to beat Bush as he would have if I ranked him first. So strategically, knowing Kerry has a greater chance of winning, I would still be smart to vote Kerry first. Therefore Nader is still hurting Kerry by running, and parties are still needed to try eliminate similar candidates.
I do agree, that Condorcet has some problems as far as seeming complex.
Here's an article I wrote about the issue some time back: http://karmatics.com/voting/movienite.html
Actually, organizing to avoid fragmenting is what causes partisanship. Duvergers law.
Condorcet and/or approval voting solves this problem, but until we have that, we're stuck with partisanship and all the screwiness of plurality elections.
Given that ajax techniques were pretty much non-existant in 98, yep, it would have been considered innovative. Probably "nearly a decade ahead of its time" innovative.
I find it amusing (well, "annoying" is probably a better word) the way people, who have presumably never innovated anything of note in their lives, love to declare what other people have done to be "non-innovative". Why didn't you produce it for us in the time between 98 and now, if it was so easy and obvious?
So please explain how they implemented the real time dragging and other UI elements without writing code.
They don't recommend that as yet. However, it seems like you'd get more milage out of recommending vaccinnating the ones who can be most directly hurt by the disease.
I'm not sure he was trying to be funny. There was a very real possibility that people would not buy an iPod in the last few months, because they knew the iPhone was on the way and it would make their iPod seem outdated. I know that for me, after seeing the iPhone demonstrated, iPods seem less exciting and cool.
I think it is significant that iPod sales have not seemed to be negatively affected by the iPhone announcement.
It's not just more Windows users than Linux users, its that most Linux users wouldn't run it anyway, presumably because they are sure that the software sends your private files back to Google, where its employees sift through them and make fun of you or something.
I'd rather have two 800 pound gorillas than just one. Competition is good.
Anyway, I just don't see the comparison. Size isn't the issue. Google doesn't have a network monopoly, which is the big difference between Microsoft and Google. If I want to stop using Google tomorrow, I can switch to a competitor without any downsides -- other than the competitor might not be as good. (example: gmail lets me forward my mail to a new account, use a non-gmail address, etc....they seem to go out of their way to NOT lock me in. That's a HUGE difference from the way Microsoft has always done business)