The premise of this post seems to be that each company has to be an "X" company, where X is a single noun. If Google is an advertising company, it can therefore logically not be a search company.
You misunderstand. Google is an advertising company, period. Advertising is the business, the opportunity. Search, maps, email, etc are merely strategies to profile individuals in order to serve the business, advertising.
Adherence to this view forces you to claim that the company dominating internet search worldwide is in fact not a search company!
People and companies are not necessarily what they do, and more importantly they are not the public face that they present to the world. You are confusing this public face with what the company's true nature is.
Google is the 800 pound Gorilla. They are not quite Microsoft yet, but they are not that far off in online advertising.
Yes, but I cannot see how Google could lock people into their advertising in the same way that Microsoft locks people into Windows, Exchange and MS Office. The cost of moving to another product will remain cheap.
Google is offering apps and services to better profile individuals. If they develop the most accurate database of profiles they can achieve lockin to the same extent that Microsoft does. There will be a cost, a loss in revenue, by switching to some other targeted adverting firm.
Google is *NOT* a search company, they are an advertising company. In particular a targeted advertising company. Everything they do - search, maps, email, etc - is just a means to collect data on you in order to build a profile. That profile is then used to enable clients to provide you with a targeted ad when you visit the client's website.
In targeted online advertising, and perhaps online advertising in general, Google is the 800 pound Gorilla. They are not quite Microsoft yet, but they are not that far off in online advertising. They are still consolidating, they are on a curve like Microsoft's, just at a far earlier stage.
In reality, the "small business" hasn't the resources to successfully challenge a large behemoth corporation for patent infringement when they decide to infringe anyway.
Wrong. Find an attorney that will work on contingency. The larger the infringer the better the attorney that will take the case due to the deeper pockets.
Your happy fairyland where Joe Inventor patents the Flux Demodulator he built in his garage and become rich selling a million of them is a fantasy. It doesn't work that way.
Wrong. Apple Computer. They successfully stopped early clones that were literally copies. Without patent protection Apple would have died at a very early stage.
Their industry benefits more from being able to crank out cheap knockoff Chanel bags that it would protecting the inventions of it's two dozen college-educated citizens.
Wrong. Some of these countries have many graduates, totals that rival many developed nations in absolute terms. The numbers only appear low because they are often expressed per capita. Many of these graduates stay in the US or EU precisely because of the lack of reward for innovation. In short, lack of patent protection can lead to a brain drain.
Wait, I am unclear as to why society would want to let an inventor "cash out" of their invention.
That provides the incentive to do the research and experimentation necessary to create the invention. Who manufacturers and markets the widgets is unimportant, there is no compelling reason for the inventor to do so.
As someone who expects to hold patents within my life I find the idea that someone could buy my patent then sit on the technology to be totally against the point.
Then don't sell the patent, license the technology. Licensing is a form of cashing out. The license can include clauses that prevent sitting on the technology. The University of California patent licensing program includes such provisions to avoid the type of abuse you describe.
Except the real value isn't having an idea. You want an idea? I got hundreds. No, the profit to society comes from *executing* the idea, making a product, and actually enriching people's lives.
Inventing something is execution. Manufacturing a product is merely duplication of the original invention.
So I say no patents. Let this be a rush to the market. AND a rush to make copycats, because, hey, if I can do the same thing for less then why *shouldn't* society reward me.
Because society benefits far more from inventors than from copiers. Without some sort of exclusivity to allow an inventor to market an invention himself, or to license the invention to others, there would be little reward for invention. Without the financial reward few would be inventors would bother. Look at countries with little effective intellectual property protection. They are frequently characterized by few inventions and businesses compete based upon being the lowest cost provider, in other words sweatshops.
That is the problem here, that it is questionable if these inventions were not independently developed. If you and someone else at exactly the same time came up with the same idea, the law grants the patent to the first to file.
In general that is a good thing. It encourage inventors to file and increase the body of public knowledge, filing sooner means patents also expire sooner. I think this far outweighs the rare occasion where you have simultaneous independent inventions.
Patents.... Legalized Extortion for the 21's century.
How much more of this do we haveto have before everyone in big business realizes that it's all a bad idea?
Patents are probably more important to small business than to big business. Without patents an inventor or small company has no protection from imitators. Without patents a small company can come up with the next great thing and a multinational conglomerate can merely copy it, manufacture at a cheaper price due to economies of scale, reach a larger audience due to vast sums of money available for advertising, etc. Without some sort of exclusivity to allow an inventor to market an invention himself, or to license the invention to others, there would be little reward for invention. Without the financial reward few would be inventors would bother. Look at countries with little effective intellectual property protection. They are frequently characterized by few inventions and businesses compete based upon being the lowest cost provider, in other words sweatshops.
The license holders have nothing to add to the marketplace and so their not interested in cross licenses. They just want the money now, which stifles invention and progress.
There is nothing inherently wrong with license holders. They provide one valid method for an investor to cash out on the invention. The fact that the system is currently abused does not mean we should throw it out. Should we get rid of email because there is spam? A firm that specializes in license holding for a particular technology or industry can be a useful "marketplace" for companies seeking to license innovations. Here is one example of a good license holder, the University of California. The University holds numerous patents with no intention to do anything more than license the invention. The licensing fees vary depending on the organization, small local firms are treated more favorably than international conglomerates, firms that employ or support faculty or students are treated more favorably, venture capitalists find the University's published list of available licenses a good source of ideas for new firms. University representatives that I have spoken with have mentioned that they know numerous serial entrepreneurs who come to them to find an interesting patent, develop a company, sell it, and return to repeat the cycle. Also, IIRC, the University gets 50% of the licensing fees, the faculty/student inventor gets around 30%, and his/her department gets the remainder.
The basic idea behind a patent is to allow the patent holder "shelter time" to develop, market, sell, and profit from their new inventions.
It is an error to think that the patent owner has to build something. When the patent system was established it was understood that some farmer or garage mechanic may make the big intellectual break through and not have the money to manufacture the gizmo. The "shelter time" was not only to develop, market, sell, and profit. It was also intended to allow investors to seek financing for a new venture or to license the invention to existing manufacturers.
How can a company claim damages if they haven't done the above? Patents are what they are, but it strikes me as just silly - you might be in violation of the patent, but how can you, as the patent holder, claim damages without any proof that loss has occurred?
The fact that an unlicensed party sold a product based upon your patent is inherently a loss. There is a loss in terms of the opportunity to make such a sale yourself, a loss in terms of a licensing fee, a loss in terms of diminished value to those you are currently negotiating licenses with, etc.
The lawyers won long ago, not the terrorists. Chemistry sets of 2000 were nothing like the chemistry sets of the 1970s. Or maybe it wasn't the lawyers, but "do gooders" trying to save the children.
The cost of the operating system and office is insignificant. The maintenance costs are not necessarily lower since much "maintenance" is performed by teachers themselves. Sticking to Mac OS and Window has a maintenance advantage because they are what the teachers know. Teachers would be lost with Linux, and Linux's by nerds for nerds attitude hurts it here. Also, teaching kids to use the non-dominant word processor and spreadsheet is poor preparation for work environments. Some classes in school are more vocational than pure theory, Windows and Office is a must. In short, what for the back office and pro and semi-pro admins does not necessarily work in the classroom. Can things change, yes, but Linux will have to become a majpr player on the home desktop first.
I did not have any problems with unused money or going over. The supermarket checked the balance on the card, charged that exact amount, and I paid the remainder with cash. I will admit that I only received these rebate cards twice and both times I only tried to use them at the supermarket. I will also admit that the people at the register at the supermarket seem a little brighter and more capable than the people at the register elsewhere, YMMV.
If it was just text editing and not code hinting, folding, anti-aliasing, line counting, syntax checking, and a bunch of other things all at the same time -- I might agree with that. However, in this case, I think you're misusing John's quote.
Not necessarily. If your *text editor* is doing all that then something may be very very wrong, especially in your conceptual design. If it is running poorly on a 3 GHz system, then the very very wrong may be in your code implementation. The LISA assembler on the 8-bit 1 MHz Apple II of the early 1980s had a built-in text editor that was doing real time syntax checking and code generation as you typed, there are a lot of CPU cycles between individual keystrokes. IIRC when you told it to assemble it was mostly going back through the generated code filling in code/data offsets.
AT&T does charge that additional amount per month, in the form of the $19.99/month unlimited data package that is required with the iPhone.
AT&T can pay Apple because they are not subsidizing the phone. Did you think Motorola, Nokia, snd Samsung were giving AT&T phones for free?:-) The phone subsidy is built into the pricing of the regular plan. That data plan you cite is not iPhone specific, it is the same price for other phones as well. The only difference is that for the iPhone it is not optional.
business...simply because their rebates are in the form of 'pre-charged debit cards' which I still haven't found a method of depositing the value of into my bank account without incurring a fee.
The card I received from cingular/att was equivalent to a VISA check/debit card, I spent the full amount without fees at the grocery store. Surely you buy things at some place that accepts VISA cards?
Why haven't schools switched to all Linux? Linux teaches students about computers Windows teaches students how to use Windows
No. Linux and Windows are equivalent in the sense that neither teaches students about computers, they both teach students about an operating system.
if a UNIX student learned on vi, they could edit text files with ease on a Linux system
Again, Linux and Windows are far more alike than you claim. The student who learned DOS EDIT can open a console and run EDIT under Windows.
More importantly, much open source software (OpenOffice, GIMP, Apache, MySQL,...) is also available for Windows.
Schools should not be teaching Windows or Linux. Neither is appropriate. Common business and productivity tools are appropriate, but only to the degree that a student could write and print an essay, solve some math problems with a spreadsheet, etc. Expertise in such tools should be reserved for some sort of business class. Teaching kids to be admins is *not* something K-12 education should be doing. We have already stolen too much time from basic reading, writing, arithmetic, and science.
Valve sold lower value products at lower prices. Why were they lower valued? Because they were region locked to Thailand and Russia.
This is exactly what the doctrine of first sale is supposed to prevent. If I sell you something, you should be able to sell it on to anyone else - and if I try to prevent you from doing so, I should be fined.
"First doctrine" is being misapplied here. You are free to sell the game under the same terms that you bought it under, region locked. If you buy a region locked version and attempt to sell it as an unlocked version I suggest you do not consult the authorities. You are engaging in fraud, you will be fined, not the original publisher.
You would need to establish a null hypothesis first, ie. what distribution you expect the figures to follow if there hasn't been a real decrease. Perhaps a normal distribution centred around the previous figures? Then you have to determine a standard deviation, and I have no idea what to pick there. Perhaps a statistics expert can help. I'm an undergrad maths student, but avoid stats where possible, so can't help much.
Nevertheless, I'd expect a 7% drop to be statistically significant given any reasonable assumptions. It's not, however, very surprising.
Your methodology is half way there, don't avoid stats.;-) Unexpectedly, the stats class I had in business school was better than the stats class I had from the math department as a CS undergraduate.
You don't know if the drop is really 7%. Raw month to month or quarter to quarter data can be misleading. At a minimum you need to seasonally adjust the numbers. You may also want to compare the adoption rate of Vista to XP.
Willful disabling is a common method of creating different versions. There is no difference between artificially removing a level and artificially limiting to a region. Being able to play from any region is a feature, one that *few* will use, and is a good candidate for versioning.
I rhetorically asked and answered that question in the original post. The lost value *is* the region portability, which is clearly stated *on the box*.
So a product moved across a national border or an ocean or whatever -- big deal. Happens all the time and that's the nature of the modern world. The copy from India or Taiwan or whatever was legal and I'm sure Valve would prefer that it stay far, far away from the more profitable countries (so as to not illustrate the price disparity) but that's not reality.
No. Valve sold lower value products at lower prices. Why were they lower valued? Because they were region locked to Thailand and Russia. Higher valued products that work in the US and EU are sold at higher prices.
Put simply: The customer bought something from an authorized vendor; there was an exchange of good for payment. Give them their game, Valve, or return them their money. Anything less makes you a common thief. End of story.
No. The deal finders mistook a lower valued version for a higher valued version. Or perhaps the deal finders were scammed by middlemen who misrepresented the products. These deal finders now understand the phrase "a deal that is too good to be true". When you engage in such deals you should not be surprised to find that you have bought stolen or counterfeit goods. Yes, counterfeit. If the locked Russian/Thai version was sold to US/EU customers then it is counterfeit, a misrepresentation, much like a 2.4 GHz CPU that is remarked as a 3.0 GHz CPU.
So if patents provide a shield against big companies, how come the patent you mentioned did not protect Woz and Apple from IBM (IIRC IBM-PC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM-PC came out 1981, only 4 years after said patent was granted). Or were patent lifetimes that much shorter then?
This particular patent covered a very low cost video implementation. The IBM PC used a different and more expensive implementation. The Apple II retailed for around $1200 and the IBM PC for around $3000, obviously video implementation is only one factor. The PC was not really a direct competitor at that time, that comes later in history. Apple did use patents against some early Apple II cloners and protected the US market, maybe Europe too but I'm not sure. Without patents Apple II clones would have appeared at a far earlier point in history, deprived Apple of a lot of revenue, without that revenue the Mac may never have happened,... Those early years of a new company are so fragile.
I understand your points, however it was *Valve* who decided to sell these products at a different price.... Valve should have *never* offered these products for such discounts.
No. Valve sold lower value products at lower prices. Why were they lower valued? Because they were region locked to Thailand and Russia. Higher valued products that work in the US and EU are sold at higher prices.
The market discovered a cheaper price and now they have locked out the deal finders.
No. The deal finders mistook a lower valued version for a higher valued version. Or perhaps the deal finders were scammed by middlemen who misrepresented the products. These deal finders now understand the phrase "a deal that is too good to be true". When you engage is such deals you should not be surprised to find that you have bought stolen or counterfeit goods.
"Proprietary technology is considered crucial to entrepreneurial efforts, virtually required by angel investors and venture capitalists. Without it a new venture is vulnerable to free riders who will replicate products or services without having to replicate or contribute to the original inventor's R&D."
That is a common view of course, but do you think the "successful" companies started this way? Nope.
Sorry, but you are wrong. Seriously, you really need to read up on this topic. Wherever you are getting your information is terribly one side, religious dogma like.
Microcomputer for use with video display
United States Patent 4136359
Apple Computer, Inc.
Wozniak, Stephen G.
04/11/1977
Slashdot Mirror
The premise of this post seems to be that each company has to be an "X" company, where X is a single noun. If Google is an advertising company, it can therefore logically not be a search company.
You misunderstand. Google is an advertising company, period. Advertising is the business, the opportunity. Search, maps, email, etc are merely strategies to profile individuals in order to serve the business, advertising.
Adherence to this view forces you to claim that the company dominating internet search worldwide is in fact not a search company!
People and companies are not necessarily what they do, and more importantly they are not the public face that they present to the world. You are confusing this public face with what the company's true nature is.
Google is the 800 pound Gorilla. They are not quite Microsoft yet, but they are not that far off in online advertising.
Yes, but I cannot see how Google could lock people into their advertising in the same way that Microsoft locks people into Windows, Exchange and MS Office. The cost of moving to another product will remain cheap.
Google is offering apps and services to better profile individuals. If they develop the most accurate database of profiles they can achieve lockin to the same extent that Microsoft does. There will be a cost, a loss in revenue, by switching to some other targeted adverting firm.
Google is *NOT* a search company, they are an advertising company. In particular a targeted advertising company. Everything they do - search, maps, email, etc - is just a means to collect data on you in order to build a profile. That profile is then used to enable clients to provide you with a targeted ad when you visit the client's website.
In targeted online advertising, and perhaps online advertising in general, Google is the 800 pound Gorilla. They are not quite Microsoft yet, but they are not that far off in online advertising. They are still consolidating, they are on a curve like Microsoft's, just at a far earlier stage.
In reality, the "small business" hasn't the resources to successfully challenge a large behemoth corporation for patent infringement when they decide to infringe anyway.
Wrong. Find an attorney that will work on contingency. The larger the infringer the better the attorney that will take the case due to the deeper pockets.
Your happy fairyland where Joe Inventor patents the Flux Demodulator he built in his garage and become rich selling a million of them is a fantasy. It doesn't work that way.
Wrong. Apple Computer. They successfully stopped early clones that were literally copies. Without patent protection Apple would have died at a very early stage.
Their industry benefits more from being able to crank out cheap knockoff Chanel bags that it would protecting the inventions of it's two dozen college-educated citizens.
Wrong. Some of these countries have many graduates, totals that rival many developed nations in absolute terms. The numbers only appear low because they are often expressed per capita. Many of these graduates stay in the US or EU precisely because of the lack of reward for innovation. In short, lack of patent protection can lead to a brain drain.
Wait, I am unclear as to why society would want to let an inventor "cash out" of their invention.
That provides the incentive to do the research and experimentation necessary to create the invention. Who manufacturers and markets the widgets is unimportant, there is no compelling reason for the inventor to do so.
As someone who expects to hold patents within my life I find the idea that someone could buy my patent then sit on the technology to be totally against the point.
Then don't sell the patent, license the technology. Licensing is a form of cashing out. The license can include clauses that prevent sitting on the technology. The University of California patent licensing program includes such provisions to avoid the type of abuse you describe.
Except the real value isn't having an idea. You want an idea? I got hundreds. No, the profit to society comes from *executing* the idea, making a product, and actually enriching people's lives.
Inventing something is execution. Manufacturing a product is merely duplication of the original invention.
So I say no patents. Let this be a rush to the market. AND a rush to make copycats, because, hey, if I can do the same thing for less then why *shouldn't* society reward me.
Because society benefits far more from inventors than from copiers. Without some sort of exclusivity to allow an inventor to market an invention himself, or to license the invention to others, there would be little reward for invention. Without the financial reward few would be inventors would bother. Look at countries with little effective intellectual property protection. They are frequently characterized by few inventions and businesses compete based upon being the lowest cost provider, in other words sweatshops.
That is the problem here, that it is questionable if these inventions were not independently developed. If you and someone else at exactly the same time came up with the same idea, the law grants the patent to the first to file.
In general that is a good thing. It encourage inventors to file and increase the body of public knowledge, filing sooner means patents also expire sooner. I think this far outweighs the rare occasion where you have simultaneous independent inventions.
Patents.... Legalized Extortion for the 21's century. How much more of this do we haveto have before everyone in big business realizes that it's all a bad idea?
Patents are probably more important to small business than to big business. Without patents an inventor or small company has no protection from imitators. Without patents a small company can come up with the next great thing and a multinational conglomerate can merely copy it, manufacture at a cheaper price due to economies of scale, reach a larger audience due to vast sums of money available for advertising, etc. Without some sort of exclusivity to allow an inventor to market an invention himself, or to license the invention to others, there would be little reward for invention. Without the financial reward few would be inventors would bother. Look at countries with little effective intellectual property protection. They are frequently characterized by few inventions and businesses compete based upon being the lowest cost provider, in other words sweatshops.
The license holders have nothing to add to the marketplace and so their not interested in cross licenses. They just want the money now, which stifles invention and progress.
There is nothing inherently wrong with license holders. They provide one valid method for an investor to cash out on the invention. The fact that the system is currently abused does not mean we should throw it out. Should we get rid of email because there is spam? A firm that specializes in license holding for a particular technology or industry can be a useful "marketplace" for companies seeking to license innovations. Here is one example of a good license holder, the University of California. The University holds numerous patents with no intention to do anything more than license the invention. The licensing fees vary depending on the organization, small local firms are treated more favorably than international conglomerates, firms that employ or support faculty or students are treated more favorably, venture capitalists find the University's published list of available licenses a good source of ideas for new firms. University representatives that I have spoken with have mentioned that they know numerous serial entrepreneurs who come to them to find an interesting patent, develop a company, sell it, and return to repeat the cycle. Also, IIRC, the University gets 50% of the licensing fees, the faculty/student inventor gets around 30%, and his/her department gets the remainder.
The basic idea behind a patent is to allow the patent holder "shelter time" to develop, market, sell, and profit from their new inventions.
It is an error to think that the patent owner has to build something. When the patent system was established it was understood that some farmer or garage mechanic may make the big intellectual break through and not have the money to manufacture the gizmo. The "shelter time" was not only to develop, market, sell, and profit. It was also intended to allow investors to seek financing for a new venture or to license the invention to existing manufacturers.
How can a company claim damages if they haven't done the above? Patents are what they are, but it strikes me as just silly - you might be in violation of the patent, but how can you, as the patent holder, claim damages without any proof that loss has occurred?
The fact that an unlicensed party sold a product based upon your patent is inherently a loss. There is a loss in terms of the opportunity to make such a sale yourself, a loss in terms of a licensing fee, a loss in terms of diminished value to those you are currently negotiating licenses with, etc.
The lawyers won long ago, not the terrorists. Chemistry sets of 2000 were nothing like the chemistry sets of the 1970s. Or maybe it wasn't the lawyers, but "do gooders" trying to save the children.
The cost of the operating system and office is insignificant. The maintenance costs are not necessarily lower since much "maintenance" is performed by teachers themselves. Sticking to Mac OS and Window has a maintenance advantage because they are what the teachers know. Teachers would be lost with Linux, and Linux's by nerds for nerds attitude hurts it here. Also, teaching kids to use the non-dominant word processor and spreadsheet is poor preparation for work environments. Some classes in school are more vocational than pure theory, Windows and Office is a must. In short, what for the back office and pro and semi-pro admins does not necessarily work in the classroom. Can things change, yes, but Linux will have to become a majpr player on the home desktop first.
I did not have any problems with unused money or going over. The supermarket checked the balance on the card, charged that exact amount, and I paid the remainder with cash. I will admit that I only received these rebate cards twice and both times I only tried to use them at the supermarket. I will also admit that the people at the register at the supermarket seem a little brighter and more capable than the people at the register elsewhere, YMMV.
If it was just text editing and not code hinting, folding, anti-aliasing, line counting, syntax checking, and a bunch of other things all at the same time -- I might agree with that. However, in this case, I think you're misusing John's quote.
Not necessarily. If your *text editor* is doing all that then something may be very very wrong, especially in your conceptual design. If it is running poorly on a 3 GHz system, then the very very wrong may be in your code implementation. The LISA assembler on the 8-bit 1 MHz Apple II of the early 1980s had a built-in text editor that was doing real time syntax checking and code generation as you typed, there are a lot of CPU cycles between individual keystrokes. IIRC when you told it to assemble it was mostly going back through the generated code filling in code/data offsets.
AT&T does charge that additional amount per month, in the form of the $19.99/month unlimited data package that is required with the iPhone.
:-) The phone subsidy is built into the pricing of the regular plan. That data plan you cite is not iPhone specific, it is the same price for other phones as well. The only difference is that for the iPhone it is not optional.
AT&T can pay Apple because they are not subsidizing the phone. Did you think Motorola, Nokia, snd Samsung were giving AT&T phones for free?
business...simply because their rebates are in the form of 'pre-charged debit cards' which I still haven't found a method of depositing the value of into my bank account without incurring a fee.
The card I received from cingular/att was equivalent to a VISA check/debit card, I spent the full amount without fees at the grocery store. Surely you buy things at some place that accepts VISA cards?
Why haven't schools switched to all Linux? Linux teaches students about computers Windows teaches students how to use Windows
...) is also available for Windows.
No. Linux and Windows are equivalent in the sense that neither teaches students about computers, they both teach students about an operating system.
if a UNIX student learned on vi, they could edit text files with ease on a Linux system
Again, Linux and Windows are far more alike than you claim. The student who learned DOS EDIT can open a console and run EDIT under Windows.
More importantly, much open source software (OpenOffice, GIMP, Apache, MySQL,
Schools should not be teaching Windows or Linux. Neither is appropriate. Common business and productivity tools are appropriate, but only to the degree that a student could write and print an essay, solve some math problems with a spreadsheet, etc. Expertise in such tools should be reserved for some sort of business class. Teaching kids to be admins is *not* something K-12 education should be doing. We have already stolen too much time from basic reading, writing, arithmetic, and science.
Valve sold lower value products at lower prices. Why were they lower valued? Because they were region locked to Thailand and Russia.
This is exactly what the doctrine of first sale is supposed to prevent. If I sell you something, you should be able to sell it on to anyone else - and if I try to prevent you from doing so, I should be fined.
"First doctrine" is being misapplied here. You are free to sell the game under the same terms that you bought it under, region locked. If you buy a region locked version and attempt to sell it as an unlocked version I suggest you do not consult the authorities. You are engaging in fraud, you will be fined, not the original publisher.
You would need to establish a null hypothesis first, ie. what distribution you expect the figures to follow if there hasn't been a real decrease. Perhaps a normal distribution centred around the previous figures? Then you have to determine a standard deviation, and I have no idea what to pick there. Perhaps a statistics expert can help. I'm an undergrad maths student, but avoid stats where possible, so can't help much.
;-) Unexpectedly, the stats class I had in business school was better than the stats class I had from the math department as a CS undergraduate.
Nevertheless, I'd expect a 7% drop to be statistically significant given any reasonable assumptions. It's not, however, very surprising.
Your methodology is half way there, don't avoid stats.
You don't know if the drop is really 7%. Raw month to month or quarter to quarter data can be misleading. At a minimum you need to seasonally adjust the numbers. You may also want to compare the adoption rate of Vista to XP.
Willful disabling is a common method of creating different versions. There is no difference between artificially removing a level and artificially limiting to a region. Being able to play from any region is a feature, one that *few* will use, and is a good candidate for versioning.
I rhetorically asked and answered that question in the original post. The lost value *is* the region portability, which is clearly stated *on the box*.
So a product moved across a national border or an ocean or whatever -- big deal. Happens all the time and that's the nature of the modern world. The copy from India or Taiwan or whatever was legal and I'm sure Valve would prefer that it stay far, far away from the more profitable countries (so as to not illustrate the price disparity) but that's not reality.
No. Valve sold lower value products at lower prices. Why were they lower valued? Because they were region locked to Thailand and Russia. Higher valued products that work in the US and EU are sold at higher prices.
Put simply: The customer bought something from an authorized vendor; there was an exchange of good for payment. Give them their game, Valve, or return them their money. Anything less makes you a common thief. End of story.
No. The deal finders mistook a lower valued version for a higher valued version. Or perhaps the deal finders were scammed by middlemen who misrepresented the products. These deal finders now understand the phrase "a deal that is too good to be true". When you engage in such deals you should not be surprised to find that you have bought stolen or counterfeit goods. Yes, counterfeit. If the locked Russian/Thai version was sold to US/EU customers then it is counterfeit, a misrepresentation, much like a 2.4 GHz CPU that is remarked as a 3.0 GHz CPU.
So if patents provide a shield against big companies, how come the patent you mentioned did not protect Woz and Apple from IBM (IIRC IBM-PC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM-PC came out 1981, only 4 years after said patent was granted). Or were patent lifetimes that much shorter then?
... Those early years of a new company are so fragile.
This particular patent covered a very low cost video implementation. The IBM PC used a different and more expensive implementation. The Apple II retailed for around $1200 and the IBM PC for around $3000, obviously video implementation is only one factor. The PC was not really a direct competitor at that time, that comes later in history. Apple did use patents against some early Apple II cloners and protected the US market, maybe Europe too but I'm not sure. Without patents Apple II clones would have appeared at a far earlier point in history, deprived Apple of a lot of revenue, without that revenue the Mac may never have happened,
I understand your points, however it was *Valve* who decided to sell these products at a different price. ... Valve should have *never* offered these products for such discounts.
No. Valve sold lower value products at lower prices. Why were they lower valued? Because they were region locked to Thailand and Russia. Higher valued products that work in the US and EU are sold at higher prices.
The market discovered a cheaper price and now they have locked out the deal finders.
No. The deal finders mistook a lower valued version for a higher valued version. Or perhaps the deal finders were scammed by middlemen who misrepresented the products. These deal finders now understand the phrase "a deal that is too good to be true". When you engage is such deals you should not be surprised to find that you have bought stolen or counterfeit goods.
"Proprietary technology is considered crucial to entrepreneurial efforts, virtually required by angel investors and venture capitalists. Without it a new venture is vulnerable to free riders who will replicate products or services without having to replicate or contribute to the original inventor's R&D."
That is a common view of course, but do you think the "successful" companies started this way? Nope.
Sorry, but you are wrong. Seriously, you really need to read up on this topic. Wherever you are getting your information is terribly one side, religious dogma like.
Microcomputer for use with video display
United States Patent 4136359
Apple Computer, Inc.
Wozniak, Stephen G.
04/11/1977