This is actually an old idea repackaged in a new language and it's already been eating into the profits of manufacturers since the unpublicized scanner/computer revolution. It's called a private label or a generic. The content of Coke and the process for making it has never been a secret (not in the last fifty years anyway). Any laboratory/manufacturer can make a Coca Cola that is as good and as indistinguishable as the original. This has been proven over and over again in double-blind taste studies (Coke loyalists please withhold your flames and your counter-examples until I'm finished). All this hubris about the secret Coke formula is just a myth created and orchestrated by Coke's Public Relations department, nothing more.
What has this to do scanners/computers? Did you say? Well, since the advent of the scanners especially, the only information that has remained secret and proprietary has been held by the supermarkets and the retailers. It's the detailed purchasing information that the scanners collect. Now that any factory can replicate any consumer goods in the World, to the point of turning them into commodities, that raw statistical information of consumer behaviors has become very valuable to the supermarkets. The scanner shifted the power to the supermarkets/Walmart, so to speak. Now Safeway knows it can sell 1.7 times as much ice cream if it places it below a pizza shelf, it has valuable information. It then sells that information to Nielsen ratings which then repackages it with minute information correlated from the print/television commercials which then gets resold, reprocessed, and resold until it finally gets back to the original manufacturer in usable form. And I'm only talking about Safeway in this instance. Walmart does something completely different altogether. Walmart usually guards its data jealously, it prints some of the data out in an unusable form, and Walmart is usually the one that demands its manufacturers to open its books so that it dictates what price it's willing to pay and how the manufacturer should cut its cost.
Don't get me wrong, most people are still swayed by the premium more expensive brands, but some have started to realize that the cheaper generic/private label are just as good as the originals and many have started to switch to those private labels (i.e. Kirkland Signature, Safeway generic?, Walgreen brand, etc. ).
And this is not to say, that some generics have purposefully been introduced with flaws by the supermarkets. It's just that the power of the supermarket has started to shift and the once-high *domestic* profit margin of the manufacturer has started to dwindle. (wow, this post is getting kind of long, now, Coke loyalist, flame away.)
For pitys sake does anyone take 'user reviews' seriously???
Well, I do. It's just like Slashdot. Most of the times, I don't even read the book, the user comments are more than sufficient and in some cases much more insightful.
When we want feedback from you we want it on a couple of slides. We don't want to know how you tweaked your code to get 1% performance increase. We want to know how we're progressing and if there are any show-stopping problems.
Web pages you scorn don't have "zero content". It's just information us managers need.
Some of us can't see the forest from the trees. That's true, but the same can be said of managers.
The web pages we scorn are too wordy, too positive, and too vague to be of any use.
Good thing the US doesn't count the unemployed after a short specific time period. It makes us look good. In the end, looking good, and not unemployment, is what matters.
Yes, that is funny because this bug has been recognized by Mozilla developers so don't mind if I take their word for it and not yours.
There is also a fix for it, but unfortunatly this "fix" hasn't fixed it for me yet, and from what I've read on the support forums, this fix has worked for some but not everyone.
My thoughts exactely, there is a difference between being an engineer and a low-level technician. That's why you won't find specific University degrees for being a network engineer or a sanitation engineer.
Someone mod the parent up. As a kid, I didn't know this basic difference. The real CS schools are creating researchers, not programmers. Programming is just an unwanted side-effect, a tool, and something you have to learn before the first week of class.
This is why MySQL will *never* be a replacement for Access, despite what I often see on slashdot.
It's all a matter of perspective. To a programmer, Access is the means of a cheap no-frills datasource that can be served as a service on the internet or an intranet. So in that sense, MS Access is already being replaced in that area. And to some extent, even SQL Server 2000 is starting to be replaced by MySql in some instances. And no, I'm not just trolling. And yes, I do realize that SQL Server is still much easier to use, especially now that the.NET studio does most of the work for you. But just to give you an example, my favorite host CrystalTech, which used to be very windows-centric, is now pricing MySql way below SQL Server and suggesting MySql for some jobs that SQL Server can't handle.
*Correction I always knew those Utahns were unpatriotic. All those gun-wheeling poligamying idol-worshipping Muslim-looking Mormons -- they're probably arbohring terrorists as well.
Hey, at least I'm not an ignorant american that stuffs his mouth all day on McDicko's and Cola...
Me neither. I have dual citizenship. I am French-American. I don't go to McDs. I don't drink soda or juice. I don't have a TV. And I am aware, unlike most Americans, that the head of the CIA went on the record before the war stating that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and had stopped its program a long time ago.
The only reason I took a pot shot at you was because your original post was arrogant and insulting and it had no reason to be. Noone had insulted you and noone had even taken a contrary viewpoint to yours. Apparently, the moderators agreed and that's why my cheap shot was moderated up as funny when it probably shouldn't have been.
Sure, it's market driven. Save for the thug approach, all monopolies are market driven creations. MA Bell won the phone market, IBM the mainframe market. Purely market driven.
Sure, IBM and MA Bell could have sustained their monopoly without the use of monopoly-granting patents. I believe you.
Yes, I forgot the license key, but my original point stands. If you're using Linux, that $75 is not included in the MS tax the parent poster is complaining about.
Excuse-me, but that's how OEM operating systems are sold. If you can prove you just bought a new cpu or a new hard disk, then it's yours. Most amateurs and most companies can fullfill this requirement. And besides, the parent post wasn't even talking about buying it himself, he was complaining about his company and other companies in general.
As i stated in the past the only reason verisign, ICANN or anyone else has DNS power is because everyone agrees to use their standard..
In fact, that's effectively what happened to the Minitel in France. In 1985, the French Post Office started giving away free Minitels instead of free telephone books. The Minitel effectively became the network with the largest user base in the World, while the rest of the World and the United States were still in the dark ages. Ecommerce was introduced overnight in France. By 1986, you could order anything you wanted over the Minitel, porn, train tickets, retail, etc. If it weren't for the French government's fears, and if it weren't for the French government's desire for control, the Minitel would be the standard of the World Wide Web today. Instead it killed the internet within its own borders.
This is like a customer of a hot dog stand who doesn't use ketchup and complains about it because the hot dog stand always orders way too much ketchup so it can get it for rock-bottom prices.
You want a non-exclusive unsupported OEM version of Microsoft, get it here $5 - Windows XP Pro
$5 - Windows XP Home
$7 - Windows Server 2003
$6 - Windows 2000 Pro OS
What? Your company doesn't want to pay that kind of money? It's too expensive you say? Your company doesn't want to buy one license at a time? It would save on labor cost to just have one CD with no registration key. It may even want to get some sort of minimum level of support. Well, the evil Microsoft corporation can help you with that -- it's all part of the negotiations. In the end, your company gets a wholesale quantity at a wholesale rock-bottom price.
And yes, your buyer will probably get too many licenses, but hopefully your buyer will base his purchasing decision on the actual number of licenses he needs and not the actual number of licenses he gets.
Sincerely Yours,
A Fellow Linux User (who chose not to pay the extra $5 the last time I assembled a Linux box)
Slashdot Mirror
What has this to do scanners/computers? Did you say? Well, since the advent of the scanners especially, the only information that has remained secret and proprietary has been held by the supermarkets and the retailers. It's the detailed purchasing information that the scanners collect. Now that any factory can replicate any consumer goods in the World, to the point of turning them into commodities, that raw statistical information of consumer behaviors has become very valuable to the supermarkets. The scanner shifted the power to the supermarkets/Walmart, so to speak. Now Safeway knows it can sell 1.7 times as much ice cream if it places it below a pizza shelf, it has valuable information. It then sells that information to Nielsen ratings which then repackages it with minute information correlated from the print/television commercials which then gets resold, reprocessed, and resold until it finally gets back to the original manufacturer in usable form. And I'm only talking about Safeway in this instance. Walmart does something completely different altogether. Walmart usually guards its data jealously, it prints some of the data out in an unusable form, and Walmart is usually the one that demands its manufacturers to open its books so that it dictates what price it's willing to pay and how the manufacturer should cut its cost.
Don't get me wrong, most people are still swayed by the premium more expensive brands, but some have started to realize that the cheaper generic/private label are just as good as the originals and many have started to switch to those private labels (i.e. Kirkland Signature, Safeway generic?, Walgreen brand, etc. ).
And this is not to say, that some generics have purposefully been introduced with flaws by the supermarkets. It's just that the power of the supermarket has started to shift and the once-high *domestic* profit margin of the manufacturer has started to dwindle. (wow, this post is getting kind of long, now, Coke loyalist, flame away.)
Well, I do. It's just like Slashdot. Most of the times, I don't even read the book, the user comments are more than sufficient and in some cases much more insightful.
Don't worry,the "last modified date" of February 15th, 2004 puts in the clear. (-;
February 15th? I guess they're a day ahead in Wikipedia.
Some of us can't see the forest from the trees. That's true, but the same can be said of managers.
The web pages we scorn are too wordy, too positive, and too vague to be of any use.
Good thing the US doesn't count the unemployed after a short specific time period. It makes us look good. In the end, looking good, and not unemployment, is what matters.
There is also a fix for it, but unfortunatly this "fix" hasn't fixed it for me yet, and from what I've read on the support forums, this fix has worked for some but not everyone.
My thoughts exactely, there is a difference between being an engineer and a low-level technician. That's why you won't find specific University degrees for being a network engineer or a sanitation engineer.
It was a super nice client until they introduced a bug that can't load the JVM properly.
Until, they fix this, I'll be using Opera.
Someone mod the parent up. As a kid, I didn't know this basic difference. The real CS schools are creating researchers, not programmers. Programming is just an unwanted side-effect, a tool, and something you have to learn before the first week of class.
It's all a matter of perspective. To a programmer, Access is the means of a cheap no-frills datasource that can be served as a service on the internet or an intranet. So in that sense, MS Access is already being replaced in that area. And to some extent, even SQL Server 2000 is starting to be replaced by MySql in some instances. And no, I'm not just trolling. And yes, I do realize that SQL Server is still much easier to use, especially now that the .NET studio does most of the work for you. But just to give you an example, my favorite host CrystalTech, which used to be very windows-centric, is now pricing MySql way below SQL Server and suggesting MySql for some jobs that SQL Server can't handle.
That reasoning worked really well for Noriega, Osama Bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein.
Who is this Sill justice? And how can I get him reelected/nominated? I live in California. Forgive my ignorance.
That's because I forgot to.
*Correction I always knew those Utahns were unpatriotic. All those gun-wheeling poligamying idol-worshipping Muslim-looking Mormons -- they're probably arbohring terrorists as well.
Me neither. I have dual citizenship. I am French-American. I don't go to McDs. I don't drink soda or juice. I don't have a TV. And I am aware, unlike most Americans, that the head of the CIA went on the record before the war stating that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and had stopped its program a long time ago.
The only reason I took a pot shot at you was because your original post was arrogant and insulting and it had no reason to be. Noone had insulted you and noone had even taken a contrary viewpoint to yours. Apparently, the moderators agreed and that's why my cheap shot was moderated up as funny when it probably shouldn't have been.
Take care,
Sure, IBM and MA Bell could have sustained their monopoly without the use of monopoly-granting patents. I believe you.
Yep. That's right. Keep on repeating it. You might start believing it.
I always knew those Utahns were potential terrorists. Now this confirms it.
Good that will satisfy those fake-moon-landing conspiracy theorists.
OT: Regarding your signature about Venezuela
Yes, I forgot the license key, but my original point stands. If you're using Linux, that $75 is not included in the MS tax the parent poster is complaining about.
Excuse-me, but that's how OEM operating systems are sold. If you can prove you just bought a new cpu or a new hard disk, then it's yours. Most amateurs and most companies can fullfill this requirement. And besides, the parent post wasn't even talking about buying it himself, he was complaining about his company and other companies in general.
In fact, that's effectively what happened to the Minitel in France. In 1985, the French Post Office started giving away free Minitels instead of free telephone books. The Minitel effectively became the network with the largest user base in the World, while the rest of the World and the United States were still in the dark ages. Ecommerce was introduced overnight in France. By 1986, you could order anything you wanted over the Minitel, porn, train tickets, retail, etc. If it weren't for the French government's fears, and if it weren't for the French government's desire for control, the Minitel would be the standard of the World Wide Web today. Instead it killed the internet within its own borders.
You want a non-exclusive unsupported OEM version of Microsoft, get it here
$5 - Windows XP Pro
$5 - Windows XP Home
$7 - Windows Server 2003
$6 - Windows 2000 Pro OS
What? Your company doesn't want to pay that kind of money? It's too expensive you say? Your company doesn't want to buy one license at a time? It would save on labor cost to just have one CD with no registration key. It may even want to get some sort of minimum level of support. Well, the evil Microsoft corporation can help you with that -- it's all part of the negotiations. In the end, your company gets a wholesale quantity at a wholesale rock-bottom price.
And yes, your buyer will probably get too many licenses, but hopefully your buyer will base his purchasing decision on the actual number of licenses he needs and not the actual number of licenses he gets.
Sincerely Yours,
A Fellow Linux User
(who chose not to pay the extra $5 the last time I assembled a Linux box)
My bad.
I wouldn't call this a success story, especially since you both lived in the same house.