That's not what I meant. I was asking about the economic theories about investment and salary differences. As an aside, FallLine corrected me on my logic (yet again, I might add) as to the investment world and its impact on the economy at large.
My post was aimed towards taking a look at how best the money might be distributed by the corporation. In the long term, the corporation (CEO included) does better if the economy is doing better, right? So if I were a CEO, would it be better for me to do the 5200:1 salary ratio, or less, or more? I wasn't imposing on a specific CEO (apologies if it seemed that way), but attempting to determine the theoretical best strategy, and compare it to what's actually being done.
On that note, if you were said CEO, how would you want salaries distributed?
If you don't mind my asking, what kind of background do you have in economics? I enjoy getting your insight (no sarcasm). Thanks for another great reply:)
If a CEO gets an extra $100 and his employee gets an extra $1, is the employee worse off? No, he's better off by $1.
It depends on what the CEO does with that money. If he doesn't need $50 of it, and puts it away somewhere, it doesn't flow back into the economy, causing problems.
If instead, the CEO gets $80 and the employee gets $21, the CEO is still well off (having the ability to invest the $30 after his original $50 in expenses), and the employee is much better off (with $20 more), and more of it flows back into the economy. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?
Didn't we just establish that people are unhappy unless they make more than their neighbor?
I don't even know if you can conclude that. If I was making $100,000 and everyone else was making $85,000, the cost of living would be such that I'd be able to live comfortably (because of the extra $15K). If I was making half what everyone else made, inflation would cause prices to rise such that I'd be less able to live comfortably in the latter situation than in the former.
But maybe it's too much to think that Americans think that much about the economy.:)
The BB is the closest thing to this in functionality (and it even misses out on a bunch), and it's upwards of $400 (IIRC). I think that people are looking in the wrong market.
This isn't just another RAZR -- it's an Apple-branded iPod, cellular phone, and PDA, running OSX. While I won't be buying one (just because I don't think it's overpriced doesn't mean I can afford it), I'd seriously consider it if I had $500 to drop, and didn't mind switching to Cingular.
The only interesting concerns I've seen are about the fragility of an "all-screen" device and the copyright issues of the name, neither of which will matter much in a couple years (make it stronger, change the name).
Sounds like we agree on the main point (that nobody has a viable free-information business model), but disagree on the details. That's alright with me.
How is Photoshop "insane" while GIMP is "sane" when the former is so much better than the latter?
Quality has nothing to do with this. I'm talking "irrational," as in: it's irrational to attempt to completely lock down a piece of information when you must present an external party with the key. The free rider problem again: how are you going to sell this if everyone can get it for free?
As to the selling of labor: when you purchase a CD (or software, or whatever), do you consider it a transaction for the media, or a transaction for the labor? A lot of Slashdotters might consider the purchase of a CD to be (ideally) a transaction for the labor of the artist. I get music, I pay artist for creating music. The software transaction seems to be: I get software, I pay for media containing software, not I get software, I pay developer for creating software. That's the irrational part -- why should we pay $50 for the media, when it's the developer's time that's important? Perhaps you don't think of it that way.
I suppose that the current wave of thought -- "ideas as products" -- just seems so contrived and un-elegant. Crufty. Do you think it's the best way to handle the information economy, or do you think there's a better way?
[All] you have to do is find that first customer... (call me if you do, I have some software development ideas he might beinterested in...).
Truth. It's an interesting economic problem, though. Given a commodity (developer time, in this case), and a party desiring a related/child commodity (the final product), how can currency be exchanged for the most benefit (and least risk) for both commodity-creator and interested party?
Million dollar question right there, folks. Free software and art would both want to use such a business model. Should we go back to the patron system, should we treat a work as an "intellectual property" product? Something completely different?
Ah, that clarifies things. I'm assuming that the user in question is informed of the relevant differences (the four freedoms), and given the option. With that assumption, I don't think that any user would choose closed source, whether for selfish (piracy) or other reasons. Thus, the "thought experiment". That's also the side that RMS is taking -- the end user's side.
On the corporation's side (especially the corporation making most of their money from closed source software), it's not such an easy choice (hah). However, this might be a buggy whip (business model) problem, more than an inherent problem with the free software philosophy.
The problem for the current business model is one of timing. Developers don't generally work without pay, and clients don't generally pay without work. Right now, the exchange is cash-for-product, with deliverables being passed either way. It could instead be cash-for-development, with the clients funding work on future products that would then be delivered -- sort of a subscription model. A good company would continue to do good work, and it would be cost effective to continue to have them develop their product than to hire some outside developer to take over.
It's insane to sell software as a product (rather than labor) anyway. You can reproduce it for negligible cost, and it's the developers' time that needs to be paid for. Why not just pay for the developers' time in the first place?
Just caught this. Explains things a bit better than my earlier post.
If there are a million people who want a certain change in a Free program, then by chance, a few thousand of them will know how to program, and sooner or later, a few of them will make that change and publish their modified version and then all those million people will switch and thus we can see that only programmers can directly exercise freedoms one and three but every user can directly exercise freedoms zero and two - the freedoms to run the program and copy the program - and the non-programmer users indirectly get the benefit of freedoms one and three. They can't use these freedoms directly, because that means programming, but when other people exercise these freedoms, the non-programmers also share in the benefits.
So these four freedoms are essential for all users, including the non-programmers, who are the majority of society.
In tabletop role-playing games, people often talk about rule 0: "the GM's word is law," "players can leave at any time," etc. It's called rule 0 because it's so obvious that it's not generally listed in the rules.
Rule 0 for free software is -- basically -- the right to run it. Again, so obvious that it's silly that it needs to be there. What use would be a program that you couldn't run? However, sometimes it's helpful to label these obvious rules, just in case someone forgets them.
That said, who really cares? The people taking an interest in software licenses are either developers (who get the pseudo-in-joke) or lawyers, and who cares about the lawyers, anyway? Besides: free/open source software is a big thing now, so it must not matter to the general public.
A) Contrary to his "first level" of harm: proprietary software has vastly [out-competed] open software despite its barriers.
Thought experiment: if somehow, suddenly, Linux closed all the sources and took a non-free license, would they gain or lose users? If somehow, suddenly, Microsoft opened the sources of Vista under the GPL (or BSD, or whatever), would they gain or lose users? Correlation vs. causation and all that.
B) Contrary to his "second level" of harm: that most users still prefer closed source software despite the fact that they can't tinker with it and despite the fact that it costs more/has more barriers.
See the thought experiment. Take Photoshop: if you offered a user the choice to take Photoshop with no access to the source vs. complete access to the source, what do you think that most people would choose, all other things (including price) being equal?
C) Contrary to his "third level" of harm: that proprietary software still appeals more to its end users despite the fact that proprietary developers benefit little from the pool of open source code. This despite the fact that open source developers supposedly have a huge advantage over proprietary developers because they can exploit the GPL and other copyleft code to a level that their counterparts cannot.
The third level of harm doesn't have much to do with the end users, anyway. However, to continue the thought experiment: in an office environment, would you rather have open-source printer drivers you could get tech support to fix on-site (or vendor patches if already fixed), or closed-source printer drivers that require vendor support?
I think that your arguments focus on the wrong side of the point. Proprietary software is popular, true. That doesn't mean that open sourcing it would make it less popular.
The internet is already being treated like a toll road. To connect, you pay an ISP. Taking the analogy further: To talk to Google, you send a packet to them, and they respond back with a packet. The current system has you pay your ISP for your packet (upload speeds) and Google's packet (download speeds) over their network. Google pays their ISP for your packet (their download speeds) and Google's packet (their upload speeds) over their network. Then the two ISPs cooperate to make the connection work. Thus, each ISP is paid for both packets.
Net neutrality is great because you know that no matter who you connect to (or how), it will be treated the same way by each ISP. Without it, you might have blazing fast speeds from ISP A (in Seattle) to ISP B (in New York, owned by the same parent company, perhaps), but horrendously slow speeds from ISP A to ISP C (also in Seattle, but given lower priority for competing).
There are many other ways ISPs could game the system if they didn't have to be neutral about packets: sending mail to certain servers might cost more, or hitting certain websites, or using certain protocols.
Getting rid of net neutrality suddenly opens up all new possibilities for the ISPs to work on segmenting their users. At this point, they segment purely on bandwidth (10Mbit down costs more than 1Mbit down), which makes sense for upkeep. If they can start inspecting packets, they can segment based on the type of access you need (charge more if you're receiving HTTP GET/POST messages, instead of just sending them, for example). Pure capitalism would be alright with this -- segmentation is how most businesses work, and if the Internet were a product worth something by itself, that would be great. However, the Internet doesn't work like most businesses.
Your example about toll roads highlights the difference: we consider the Internet to be a public good. Roads are free (or charge tolls solely based on the amount of use) because they're a public good. Charging more based on where you need to go on a certain road (getting to the mall costs less than getting to your friend's house, even though you take the same route) seems crazy when you think that you paid for the road to begin with (taxes, or the toll money itself). We want the roads/Internet to be as cheap as possible for all users because the economy is driven by destinations, not travel. Making travel as cheap as possible helps the majority of businesses. Same with the Internet.
Thus, net neutrality is good for two reasons: cost stays down and benefit stays up. Removing net neutrality would reverse both of these.
(TLDR: The Internet is only worthwhile if there are people on it. Dropping neutrality makes it harder for people to communicate, lowering the benefit for everybody.)
To take this one a little farther: If you give someone a guitar rather than a radio, they can produce content. The person with a radio can only consume. Producing content will always be more complicated than consuming it (law of entropy-ish).
(Tangent: There are definitely different degrees of difficulty on the production side, though. There was an article I saw (probably on here) about interface design needing to be simple but powerful. A lot of interfaces can get very powerful, but very complex (see Vim, of which I'm a fan, but still), or very simple, but very weak (see Notepad, to stick with editors). A new user needs the simplicity, and an experienced user needs the power.)
Congratulations to the Penny Arcade guys, and everyone who donated. This kind of thing just shows the generosity that people show when they're given a chance.
No. The signing statement is of the form: "We will interpret section X as meaning Y." Where section X is the part about not opening mail without a warrant, and Y clarifies that in certain situations, warrants are unnecessary.
...any time someone who isn't an expert in the field under discussion says anything about a subject, a big black banner should appear across the bottom of the screen, saying "THIS PERSON DOESN'T KNOW WHAT S/HE IS TALKING ABOUT."
Installation was a snap for me (on Dreamhost), but it definitely needs PHP4. I left a bug report on your Sourceforge page. Looks great, by the way! Good luck with it.
I thought the PS3 had an all-new processor called the Cell, nothing to do with PPC but designed from scratch to be massively parellisable and distributed - a cluster in a box in fact. Was I dreaming?
You weren't dreaming, but I wouldn't say that the Cell has nothing to do with the PPC arch. From IBM:
While the [Synergistic Processing Unit, or SPU] ISA is a novel architecture, the operations selected for the SPU are closely aligned with the functionality of the Power(TM) VMX unit.
There are eight SPUs on the reference chip, so a Cell acts vaguely like an 8-core PPC proc. While I wouldn't have said it's the same processor as in a 360 (it's not), it does have a little in common with a PPC.
That said, this is Slashdot, and inaccuracies mean 39 lashes. Find the submitter and take them out back.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, an educational background and real-world experience. I'm going to need to take some classes sometime. (all my experience is in software)
My post was aimed towards taking a look at how best the money might be distributed by the corporation. In the long term, the corporation (CEO included) does better if the economy is doing better, right? So if I were a CEO, would it be better for me to do the 5200:1 salary ratio, or less, or more? I wasn't imposing on a specific CEO (apologies if it seemed that way), but attempting to determine the theoretical best strategy, and compare it to what's actually being done.
On that note, if you were said CEO, how would you want salaries distributed?
If you don't mind my asking, what kind of background do you have in economics? I enjoy getting your insight (no sarcasm). Thanks for another great reply :)
Yes.
A couple questions for you: have you ever been to Africa? Mexico? Poor areas of Russia, or Eastern Europe? The GP is right.
If instead, the CEO gets $80 and the employee gets $21, the CEO is still well off (having the ability to invest the $30 after his original $50 in expenses), and the employee is much better off (with $20 more), and more of it flows back into the economy. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?
But maybe it's too much to think that Americans think that much about the economy.
Now I'm reading all the comments as: "When I had problems with IE6 i moved to Final Fantasy 2.5..., wait, what?"
Thanks for the interesting discussion! (Always good to have on Slashdot.)
The BB is the closest thing to this in functionality (and it even misses out on a bunch), and it's upwards of $400 (IIRC). I think that people are looking in the wrong market.
This isn't just another RAZR -- it's an Apple-branded iPod, cellular phone, and PDA, running OSX. While I won't be buying one (just because I don't think it's overpriced doesn't mean I can afford it), I'd seriously consider it if I had $500 to drop, and didn't mind switching to Cingular.
The only interesting concerns I've seen are about the fragility of an "all-screen" device and the copyright issues of the name, neither of which will matter much in a couple years (make it stronger, change the name).
Quality has nothing to do with this. I'm talking "irrational," as in: it's irrational to attempt to completely lock down a piece of information when you must present an external party with the key. The free rider problem again: how are you going to sell this if everyone can get it for free?
As to the selling of labor: when you purchase a CD (or software, or whatever), do you consider it a transaction for the media, or a transaction for the labor? A lot of Slashdotters might consider the purchase of a CD to be (ideally) a transaction for the labor of the artist. I get music, I pay artist for creating music. The software transaction seems to be: I get software, I pay for media containing software, not I get software, I pay developer for creating software. That's the irrational part -- why should we pay $50 for the media, when it's the developer's time that's important? Perhaps you don't think of it that way.
I suppose that the current wave of thought -- "ideas as products" -- just seems so contrived and un-elegant. Crufty. Do you think it's the best way to handle the information economy, or do you think there's a better way?
Truth. It's an interesting economic problem, though. Given a commodity (developer time, in this case), and a party desiring a related/child commodity (the final product), how can currency be exchanged for the most benefit (and least risk) for both commodity-creator and interested party?
Million dollar question right there, folks. Free software and art would both want to use such a business model. Should we go back to the patron system, should we treat a work as an "intellectual property" product? Something completely different?
Ah, that clarifies things. I'm assuming that the user in question is informed of the relevant differences (the four freedoms), and given the option. With that assumption, I don't think that any user would choose closed source, whether for selfish (piracy) or other reasons. Thus, the "thought experiment". That's also the side that RMS is taking -- the end user's side.
On the corporation's side (especially the corporation making most of their money from closed source software), it's not such an easy choice (hah). However, this might be a buggy whip (business model) problem, more than an inherent problem with the free software philosophy.
The problem for the current business model is one of timing. Developers don't generally work without pay, and clients don't generally pay without work. Right now, the exchange is cash-for-product, with deliverables being passed either way. It could instead be cash-for-development, with the clients funding work on future products that would then be delivered -- sort of a subscription model. A good company would continue to do good work, and it would be cost effective to continue to have them develop their product than to hire some outside developer to take over.
It's insane to sell software as a product (rather than labor) anyway. You can reproduce it for negligible cost, and it's the developers' time that needs to be paid for. Why not just pay for the developers' time in the first place?
In tabletop role-playing games, people often talk about rule 0: "the GM's word is law," "players can leave at any time," etc. It's called rule 0 because it's so obvious that it's not generally listed in the rules.
Rule 0 for free software is -- basically -- the right to run it. Again, so obvious that it's silly that it needs to be there. What use would be a program that you couldn't run? However, sometimes it's helpful to label these obvious rules, just in case someone forgets them.
That said, who really cares? The people taking an interest in software licenses are either developers (who get the pseudo-in-joke) or lawyers, and who cares about the lawyers, anyway? Besides: free/open source software is a big thing now, so it must not matter to the general public.
See the thought experiment. Take Photoshop: if you offered a user the choice to take Photoshop with no access to the source vs. complete access to the source, what do you think that most people would choose, all other things (including price) being equal?
The third level of harm doesn't have much to do with the end users, anyway. However, to continue the thought experiment: in an office environment, would you rather have open-source printer drivers you could get tech support to fix on-site (or vendor patches if already fixed), or closed-source printer drivers that require vendor support?
I think that your arguments focus on the wrong side of the point. Proprietary software is popular, true. That doesn't mean that open sourcing it would make it less popular.
The internet is already being treated like a toll road. To connect, you pay an ISP. Taking the analogy further: To talk to Google, you send a packet to them, and they respond back with a packet. The current system has you pay your ISP for your packet (upload speeds) and Google's packet (download speeds) over their network. Google pays their ISP for your packet (their download speeds) and Google's packet (their upload speeds) over their network. Then the two ISPs cooperate to make the connection work. Thus, each ISP is paid for both packets.
Net neutrality is great because you know that no matter who you connect to (or how), it will be treated the same way by each ISP. Without it, you might have blazing fast speeds from ISP A (in Seattle) to ISP B (in New York, owned by the same parent company, perhaps), but horrendously slow speeds from ISP A to ISP C (also in Seattle, but given lower priority for competing).
There are many other ways ISPs could game the system if they didn't have to be neutral about packets: sending mail to certain servers might cost more, or hitting certain websites, or using certain protocols.
Getting rid of net neutrality suddenly opens up all new possibilities for the ISPs to work on segmenting their users. At this point, they segment purely on bandwidth (10Mbit down costs more than 1Mbit down), which makes sense for upkeep. If they can start inspecting packets, they can segment based on the type of access you need (charge more if you're receiving HTTP GET/POST messages, instead of just sending them, for example). Pure capitalism would be alright with this -- segmentation is how most businesses work, and if the Internet were a product worth something by itself, that would be great. However, the Internet doesn't work like most businesses.
Your example about toll roads highlights the difference: we consider the Internet to be a public good. Roads are free (or charge tolls solely based on the amount of use) because they're a public good. Charging more based on where you need to go on a certain road (getting to the mall costs less than getting to your friend's house, even though you take the same route) seems crazy when you think that you paid for the road to begin with (taxes, or the toll money itself). We want the roads/Internet to be as cheap as possible for all users because the economy is driven by destinations, not travel. Making travel as cheap as possible helps the majority of businesses. Same with the Internet.
Thus, net neutrality is good for two reasons: cost stays down and benefit stays up. Removing net neutrality would reverse both of these.
(TLDR: The Internet is only worthwhile if there are people on it. Dropping neutrality makes it harder for people to communicate, lowering the benefit for everybody.)
How to write a functional specification.
(Where's Bad Analogy Guy when you need him?)
To take this one a little farther: If you give someone a guitar rather than a radio, they can produce content. The person with a radio can only consume. Producing content will always be more complicated than consuming it (law of entropy-ish).
(Tangent: There are definitely different degrees of difficulty on the production side, though. There was an article I saw (probably on here) about interface design needing to be simple but powerful. A lot of interfaces can get very powerful, but very complex (see Vim, of which I'm a fan, but still), or very simple, but very weak (see Notepad, to stick with editors). A new user needs the simplicity, and an experienced user needs the power.)
Congratulations to the Penny Arcade guys, and everyone who donated. This kind of thing just shows the generosity that people show when they're given a chance.
No. The signing statement is of the form: "We will interpret section X as meaning Y." Where section X is the part about not opening mail without a warrant, and Y clarifies that in certain situations, warrants are unnecessary.
Installation was a snap for me (on Dreamhost), but it definitely needs PHP4. I left a bug report on your Sourceforge page. Looks great, by the way! Good luck with it.
We really need a "Whoosh" mod.
There are eight SPUs on the reference chip, so a Cell acts vaguely like an 8-core PPC proc. While I wouldn't have said it's the same processor as in a 360 (it's not), it does have a little in common with a PPC.
That said, this is Slashdot, and inaccuracies mean 39 lashes. Find the submitter and take them out back.