It's somewhat ironic that the label 'communist' gets attached to open source software. In fact, software, like all information goods in a networked world, is a pure public good (a technical economic term; look it up in Wikipedia or your Econ text) and therefore a standard textbook case of market failure. One possible solution to this failure is government intervention through legislating and enforcing copyrights/patents (closed source). The other possible solution is a tying arrangement whereas the software is given away for free, and technical services (not a pure public good) are tied to the software.
As a solution to public goods market failure, tie-ins have been studied by economists for decades and are conceptually nothing new (look up Nobel-laureate Ronald Coase's classic article on lighthouses). In fact, since they're entirely market-driven and require no government intervention (in the case of public domain software), they're closer in spirit to the ideals of a free market than copyrights.
Apple is a design leader, and there's a portion of the PC hardware industry that watches Apple designs and makes knock-offs on the PC side.
The question with patents is always: if this patent were not granted, would companies still have the incentive to innovate in this area with the same intensity? To the extent that this patent is original and non-obvious, I think the answer here is that the patent is justified. Apple has proven that they can innovate in this area, and they should be rewarded for this.
My guess is academic journals are extremely cheap to produce. The content is provided for free by academics and the review process is conducted for free by other academics. On top of that, they get advertising revenue with an extremely well-understood reader base.
I guess academia is to blame for these high prices, since they farm journal-publishing out to commercial publishers. The fact that the vast majority of journal consumers don't pay out-of-pocket to read these journals (libraries and institutions pay) means that journals can charge the exorbitant prices they do, and libraries have to comply.
Overall, cost is a non-issue in most of academia (I guess the undergrads pay for this indirectly to support the library:)), although I'm guessing this has more to do with the recent discussions about dislosures of negative results for clinical trials than with the economics of publishing.
Even if only 25% of registrations are relatively accurate, that's still 25% better targeting of ads than purely random. The papers know this, the advertisers know this, and the pricing of ads reflects this.
Can I have my 5 minutes reading this article back?
At one point during the 1990's, something critical changed in the computer world forever, and it is this: for any new (version of a) computer program, the number of users who have previously used either an older version of it or a different computer program within its class (OS, Office suite, Graphics suite, Internet access, etc.) *will always exceed* the number of truly 'new' users.
Although obvious once you think about it, the implications of this fact are fundamental. For example, it means that programs that try to 'reinvent the wheel', even if it's an incrementally better wheel, will fail to gain market share. The days when a word processor (Word) could replace a significantly different predecessor (WordPerfect) and succeed are over. Welcome to the world of evolutionary change, where all revolutions are doomed to failure! (sorry for the bit of flowery hyperbole:))
So maybe 'spatial' is better (though for the life of me, I still don't see how) but the majority of your 'new' users have been using Explorer or a non-spatial Linux file manager. Shouldn't the defaults reflect the preferences of the majority of users, even 'new' users?
I installed Fedora Core 2 and used it for a few days, and I must say I don't understand those who think Spatial Nautilus is a boon to new users. The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of 'new' users are previous windows users, so emulating the Windows UI, even if you think it's flawed, is the only sensible way to ease the transition into Linux. I mean, how many people who are currently using Linux or are potential future users have never used Windows before?
Besides, I thought one of the selling points of Mozilla/Firefox was tabbed browsing, so I don't have 8 or 9 different windows open on my desktop. Now suddenly having 8 or 9 Nautilus windows open is newbie-friendly? Because the same obscure 5th level subdirectory (one of tens or hundreds of directories a user would browse) opens in the same spot consistently, that makes it friendly? I don't get it.
[Yes, I know this 'feature' can be switched off, same as the new XUL spoofing 'feature' in Firefox can be switched off, but it's about the defaults, right?]
I'll say it until people understand it or refute it: you cannot be both for free trade and against outsourcing. They are the same thing. There is no difference between importing computer hardware and importing software services (outsourcing) except in the particular sector affected.
Perhaps the ranters should send back all their hardware to Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, etc. and buy American!!
"Regarding the DMCA: you can't fault Apple for using a law on the books"
So we can't fault the RIAA and the MPAA either, or any of the other companies that routinely get trashed around here for using the DMCA to squash compatibility or competition.
"What Apple says regarding breakage is true"
And what AIM, Yahoo, and MSN say regarding breakage must also be true, everytime they play their cat-and-mouse games with Gaim and Trillian.
"Apple maintaining control over the whole process from end to end is one of the things that makes the iTunes/iPod experience so friendly and pleasing"
Why don't we let Microsoft control the whole process of internet access from end to end, to make the experience "so friendly and pleasing". Oh wait...
I suggest the parent poster replace his whitewash with the one liner in my subject line:)
What I suggested had little to do with *preventing* bias and more to do with possibly identifying it. If a piece of information comes from the Wall Street Journal editorial page, I view it through a different filter than if it came from the New York Times editorial page. If a piece of information comes from Wikipedia, what filter am I supposed to use? Surely you're not suggesting I take it as 'objective truth'?
That's where references come in. They allow me, the reader, to adjust my filters according to my opinion of the sources. No one is suggesting that only "academic" sources be used, but if the information comes from a source (and it usually does), the reader has the right to know the source in order to judge its veracity for him- or herself. As a reader, I learn as much from the list of cited references to an article as I do from the article itself.
It's easy to dismiss academia as "built on the blood of grad students, corporate research money..." etc., and it's true that there are whole fields that are shamefully inadequate (as you point out historically, and as the Sokol hoax demonstrated more recently). But academia is also what gave us modern science (physical and social) and a good chunk of modern technology and medicine, and it's not fair to tar it with such a broad brush.
In any case, I was only advocating a *method* used in academia for referencing/sourcing, not the *content* of academic research. Referencing for replicability is hardly a perfect system, and it's not particularly useful in eliminating bias, but it has its (very important) functions and I don't see a superior alternative for it.
When an encyclopedia article is written by an academic 'expert', the reader might be willing to forego detailed references because there's a certain trust and appeal to authority. If I read an article about physics by Stephen Hawking, in a sense he serves as his own reference.
This situation does not apply when the encyclopedia article is written by essentially anonymous contributors. There's some reliability to be derived from open community editing, but ultimately as a reader, I need to see where the info came from. In fact, unless the article is making an original contribution to knowledge, a reader should be able to reproduce all the information in the article by looking up the references.
This 'replicability' standard is nothing new; any refereed academic journal will insist on it for the portions of an article that do not represent original knowledge. IMO, It is the only way to make Wikipedia authoritative.
Finally, I hope 'references' are not lumped or confused with 'to learn more' links. They serve completely different functions.
That way we wouldn't have had to go through the 'Phoenix-Firebird-Firefox' saga. I seriously doubt AOL is currently making any money on the 'Netscape' brand, but a Firefox-renamed-Netscape would actually have a chance of gaining some market share.
It's probably still not too late...
Re:v6 could help solve some net problems
on
IPv6 is Here
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Perhaps we will get to the point where static IP addresses are required. That might help track down spammers and other bad netizens.
Let's add "good netizens who want to be anonymous". Maybe I'm not thinking clearly, but I don't see a way of making the net spammer-proof without ending the concept of internet anonymity.
Re:Busting him for violating sanctions
on
Bobby Fischer Found
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The difference is that Capone's other 'activities' were criminal, but spouting off anti-semitic and anti-American propaganda is not. I really hope this was a routine bust, not a calculated way to silence dissent (even if it's the worst kind of dissent).
I think you're right about many things, but wrong about a few.
First, shareware may be dead, but it's mostly because freeware (open source or not) has killed it. I honestly can't think of single shareware (or even adware) application that doesn't have a near-equivalent, sometimes superior, freeware replacement. And I'm talking about Windows applications.
Second, the problem with software (and music, and movies, and soon books once electronic readers improve, basically all so-called information goods) is that it's what economists call a pure public good: it's nonrival in consumption (my consumption has absolutely no effect on your consumption of the same good) and non-exclusive (you can't prevent me from consuming it). This is a classic case of market failure and an underlying cause of the 'free-rider' problem.
So yes, basing your business model on the production of a pure public good is problematic. I'm obviously simplifying, but the public good nature of information is *the* heart of the 'piracy' problem and it's silly to try moral-suasion in the face of economic reality.
For those considering installing Firefox on Win2k PCs they don't have 'administrator' accounts on, I can report that it installs and works perfectly well from a 'power user' account. Perfect for those considering an installation on a work PC.
You should probably find out if IE uses any work-related proxy-server and change that setting manually in Firefox once the install is complete.
"Overall, Microsoft and its employees were the country's fifth-largest political donor in the 2000 election -- contributing $4.7 million to politicians and their committees. Republicans received about 53 percent of that money."
and
'"Companies that are really toeing the 50-50 party split on donations are basically pragmatic," said Sheila Krumholz, research director for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that monitors political contributions. "They court all sides."'
No large corporation is stupid enough *not* to hedge its bets.
The problem is not the environment, but the primary human interface to the environment, which is the mouse. Having virtual 3D on a computer is completely intuitive to a human being; it's how we organize everything in real life. But mice were born in a 2D environment and that's what they're good at.
Until they invent and standardize a 3D 'gesturing' interface (think Tom Cruise in Minority Report, for example), the 3D desktop will remain without much practical value.
... it's worth repeating: Offshoring jobs is no different from importing goods. There is *no* difference between offshoring a call center job to India and buying the computers and phones for a US call center from Hong Kong. In the latter case, you're 'offshoring' manufacturing jobs to Hong Kong. This *is* how international trade works.
You can't be both for free trade and against offshoring.
Oh, and all the arguments about 'level playing fields' and 'fair trade' are recycled protectionist talking points. They've been answered a million times over in all serious discussions about trade issues.
If you think Goldman Sachs is more reliable than the US Department of Labor, you're completely naive, woefully misinformed, or government conspiracy minded (the 'or' is inclusive).
The Department of Labor, and its Bureau of Labor Statistics is *the* source for employment data in the US. No respectable academic economist would be caught dead quoting a Goldman Sachs 'report', but they'd use (and do use) BLS data without the least hesitation.
The statisticians and econometricians at the BLS are career, non-partisan employees. Their only mandate is to produce accurate data, not sell reports, which *is* Goldman Sachs' only real goal. The White House could influence what a Goldman Sachs report says infinitely more easily than they could with a BLS or DOL report.
The solution is simple: keep the government out of it. And I don't say that on libertarian grounds, but on practical ones.
Let me ask this: how many people reading this comment actually have spyware on their computers? How many have spyware on computers they have admin rights to? And how many here couldn't clean out spyware from any PC inside of an hour? I'll guess: None, none, and none.
The point is this: technological solutions exist already. Why tempt the law of unintended consequences by trying to legislate away a problem that has other solutions?
I think that's unnecessarily harsh (and the story blurb did misquote her). However, being a Linux analyst, she does have a business interest in seeing Linux flourish, and it's impossible for that not to color her judgements.
The other problem is that her background seems to be exclusively Linux. I'm not sure how you can make judgements about a whole market when you only know one product.
This *is* funny, but true as well. Few seem to have noticed that KaZaA is countersuing the music industry for 'hacking' into their network using an 'illegal' client. See here:
This coincided with the time Sharman cracked down on Kazaa Lite. I think they have to continue to crack down on unauthorized clients if they want to have a leg to stand on in court.
Slashdot Mirror
It's somewhat ironic that the label 'communist' gets attached to open source software. In fact, software, like all information goods in a networked world, is a pure public good (a technical economic term; look it up in Wikipedia or your Econ text) and therefore a standard textbook case of market failure. One possible solution to this failure is government intervention through legislating and enforcing copyrights/patents (closed source). The other possible solution is a tying arrangement whereas the software is given away for free, and technical services (not a pure public good) are tied to the software.
As a solution to public goods market failure, tie-ins have been studied by economists for decades and are conceptually nothing new (look up Nobel-laureate Ronald Coase's classic article on lighthouses). In fact, since they're entirely market-driven and require no government intervention (in the case of public domain software), they're closer in spirit to the ideals of a free market than copyrights.
Apple is a design leader, and there's a portion of the PC hardware industry that watches Apple designs and makes knock-offs on the PC side.
The question with patents is always: if this patent were not granted, would companies still have the incentive to innovate in this area with the same intensity? To the extent that this patent is original and non-obvious, I think the answer here is that the patent is justified. Apple has proven that they can innovate in this area, and they should be rewarded for this.
My guess is academic journals are extremely cheap to produce. The content is provided for free by academics and the review process is conducted for free by other academics. On top of that, they get advertising revenue with an extremely well-understood reader base.
:)), although I'm guessing this has more to do with the recent discussions about dislosures of negative results for clinical trials than with the economics of publishing.
I guess academia is to blame for these high prices, since they farm journal-publishing out to commercial publishers. The fact that the vast majority of journal consumers don't pay out-of-pocket to read these journals (libraries and institutions pay) means that journals can charge the exorbitant prices they do, and libraries have to comply.
Overall, cost is a non-issue in most of academia (I guess the undergrads pay for this indirectly to support the library
Even if only 25% of registrations are relatively accurate, that's still 25% better targeting of ads than purely random. The papers know this, the advertisers know this, and the pricing of ads reflects this.
Can I have my 5 minutes reading this article back?
At one point during the 1990's, something critical changed in the computer world forever, and it is this: for any new (version of a) computer program, the number of users who have previously used either an older version of it or a different computer program within its class (OS, Office suite, Graphics suite, Internet access, etc.) *will always exceed* the number of truly 'new' users.
:))
Although obvious once you think about it, the implications of this fact are fundamental. For example, it means that programs that try to 'reinvent the wheel', even if it's an incrementally better wheel, will fail to gain market share. The days when a word processor (Word) could replace a significantly different predecessor (WordPerfect) and succeed are over. Welcome to the world of evolutionary change, where all revolutions are doomed to failure! (sorry for the bit of flowery hyperbole
So maybe 'spatial' is better (though for the life of me, I still don't see how) but the majority of your 'new' users have been using Explorer or a non-spatial Linux file manager. Shouldn't the defaults reflect the preferences of the majority of users, even 'new' users?
I installed Fedora Core 2 and used it for a few days, and I must say I don't understand those who think Spatial Nautilus is a boon to new users. The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of 'new' users are previous windows users, so emulating the Windows UI, even if you think it's flawed, is the only sensible way to ease the transition into Linux. I mean, how many people who are currently using Linux or are potential future users have never used Windows before?
Besides, I thought one of the selling points of Mozilla/Firefox was tabbed browsing, so I don't have 8 or 9 different windows open on my desktop. Now suddenly having 8 or 9 Nautilus windows open is newbie-friendly? Because the same obscure 5th level subdirectory (one of tens or hundreds of directories a user would browse) opens in the same spot consistently, that makes it friendly? I don't get it.
[Yes, I know this 'feature' can be switched off, same as the new XUL spoofing 'feature' in Firefox can be switched off, but it's about the defaults, right?]
I'll say it until people understand it or refute it: you cannot be both for free trade and against outsourcing. They are the same thing. There is no difference between importing computer hardware and importing software services (outsourcing) except in the particular sector affected.
Perhaps the ranters should send back all their hardware to Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, etc. and buy American!!
"What Apple says regarding breakage is true" And what AIM, Yahoo, and MSN say regarding breakage must also be true, everytime they play their cat-and-mouse games with Gaim and Trillian.
"Apple maintaining control over the whole process from end to end is one of the things that makes the iTunes/iPod experience so friendly and pleasing" Why don't we let Microsoft control the whole process of internet access from end to end, to make the experience "so friendly and pleasing". Oh wait ...
I suggest the parent poster replace his whitewash with the one liner in my subject line :)
What I suggested had little to do with *preventing* bias and more to do with possibly identifying it. If a piece of information comes from the Wall Street Journal editorial page, I view it through a different filter than if it came from the New York Times editorial page. If a piece of information comes from Wikipedia, what filter am I supposed to use? Surely you're not suggesting I take it as 'objective truth'?
That's where references come in. They allow me, the reader, to adjust my filters according to my opinion of the sources. No one is suggesting that only "academic" sources be used, but if the information comes from a source (and it usually does), the reader has the right to know the source in order to judge its veracity for him- or herself. As a reader, I learn as much from the list of cited references to an article as I do from the article itself.
It's easy to dismiss academia as "built on the blood of grad students, corporate research money..." etc., and it's true that there are whole fields that are shamefully inadequate (as you point out historically, and as the Sokol hoax demonstrated more recently). But academia is also what gave us modern science (physical and social) and a good chunk of modern technology and medicine, and it's not fair to tar it with such a broad brush.
In any case, I was only advocating a *method* used in academia for referencing/sourcing, not the *content* of academic research. Referencing for replicability is hardly a perfect system, and it's not particularly useful in eliminating bias, but it has its (very important) functions and I don't see a superior alternative for it.
When an encyclopedia article is written by an academic 'expert', the reader might be willing to forego detailed references because there's a certain trust and appeal to authority. If I read an article about physics by Stephen Hawking, in a sense he serves as his own reference.
This situation does not apply when the encyclopedia article is written by essentially anonymous contributors. There's some reliability to be derived from open community editing, but ultimately as a reader, I need to see where the info came from. In fact, unless the article is making an original contribution to knowledge, a reader should be able to reproduce all the information in the article by looking up the references.
This 'replicability' standard is nothing new; any refereed academic journal will insist on it for the portions of an article that do not represent original knowledge. IMO, It is the only way to make Wikipedia authoritative.
Finally, I hope 'references' are not lumped or confused with 'to learn more' links. They serve completely different functions.
That way we wouldn't have had to go through the 'Phoenix-Firebird-Firefox' saga. I seriously doubt AOL is currently making any money on the 'Netscape' brand, but a Firefox-renamed-Netscape would actually have a chance of gaining some market share.
...
It's probably still not too late
Let's add "good netizens who want to be anonymous". Maybe I'm not thinking clearly, but I don't see a way of making the net spammer-proof without ending the concept of internet anonymity.
The difference is that Capone's other 'activities' were criminal, but spouting off anti-semitic and anti-American propaganda is not. I really hope this was a routine bust, not a calculated way to silence dissent (even if it's the worst kind of dissent).
Yes, because as everyone knows, heavy objects fall faster than light objects ...
I think you're right about many things, but wrong about a few.
First, shareware may be dead, but it's mostly because freeware (open source or not) has killed it. I honestly can't think of single shareware (or even adware) application that doesn't have a near-equivalent, sometimes superior, freeware replacement. And I'm talking about Windows applications.
Second, the problem with software (and music, and movies, and soon books once electronic readers improve, basically all so-called information goods) is that it's what economists call a pure public good: it's nonrival in consumption (my consumption has absolutely no effect on your consumption of the same good) and non-exclusive (you can't prevent me from consuming it). This is a classic case of market failure and an underlying cause of the 'free-rider' problem.
So yes, basing your business model on the production of a pure public good is problematic. I'm obviously simplifying, but the public good nature of information is *the* heart of the 'piracy' problem and it's silly to try moral-suasion in the face of economic reality.
For those considering installing Firefox on Win2k PCs they don't have 'administrator' accounts on, I can report that it installs and works perfectly well from a 'power user' account. Perfect for those considering an installation on a work PC.
You should probably find out if IE uses any work-related proxy-server and change that setting manually in Firefox once the install is complete.
Happy browsing!
From the same article in the parent post:
"Overall, Microsoft and its employees were the country's fifth-largest political donor in the 2000 election -- contributing $4.7 million to politicians and their committees. Republicans received about 53 percent of that money."
and
'"Companies that are really toeing the 50-50 party split on donations are basically pragmatic," said Sheila Krumholz, research director for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that monitors political contributions. "They court all sides."'
No large corporation is stupid enough *not* to hedge its bets.
The problem is not the environment, but the primary human interface to the environment, which is the mouse. Having virtual 3D on a computer is completely intuitive to a human being; it's how we organize everything in real life. But mice were born in a 2D environment and that's what they're good at.
Until they invent and standardize a 3D 'gesturing' interface (think Tom Cruise in Minority Report, for example), the 3D desktop will remain without much practical value.
Corporate backing.
... it's worth repeating: Offshoring jobs is no different from importing goods. There is *no* difference between offshoring a call center job to India and buying the computers and phones for a US call center from Hong Kong. In the latter case, you're 'offshoring' manufacturing jobs to Hong Kong. This *is* how international trade works.
You can't be both for free trade and against offshoring.
Oh, and all the arguments about 'level playing fields' and 'fair trade' are recycled protectionist talking points. They've been answered a million times over in all serious discussions about trade issues.
If you think Goldman Sachs is more reliable than the US Department of Labor, you're completely naive, woefully misinformed, or government conspiracy minded (the 'or' is inclusive).
The Department of Labor, and its Bureau of Labor Statistics is *the* source for employment data in the US. No respectable academic economist would be caught dead quoting a Goldman Sachs 'report', but they'd use (and do use) BLS data without the least hesitation.
The statisticians and econometricians at the BLS are career, non-partisan employees. Their only mandate is to produce accurate data, not sell reports, which *is* Goldman Sachs' only real goal. The White House could influence what a Goldman Sachs report says infinitely more easily than they could with a BLS or DOL report.
is that the removed paragraph is now printed in full in the Washington Post, a publication orders of magnitude more popular than the ACLU's website.
...
Gotta love the law of unintended consequences
The solution is simple: keep the government out of it. And I don't say that on libertarian grounds, but on practical ones.
Let me ask this: how many people reading this comment actually have spyware on their computers? How many have spyware on computers they have admin rights to? And how many here couldn't clean out spyware from any PC inside of an hour? I'll guess: None, none, and none.
The point is this: technological solutions exist already. Why tempt the law of unintended consequences by trying to legislate away a problem that has other solutions?
I think that's unnecessarily harsh (and the story blurb did misquote her). However, being a Linux analyst, she does have a business interest in seeing Linux flourish, and it's impossible for that not to color her judgements.
The other problem is that her background seems to be exclusively Linux. I'm not sure how you can make judgements about a whole market when you only know one product.
This *is* funny, but true as well. Few seem to have noticed that KaZaA is countersuing the music industry for 'hacking' into their network using an 'illegal' client. See here:
a .s ues.ap/
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/09/24/kaza
This coincided with the time Sharman cracked down on Kazaa Lite. I think they have to continue to crack down on unauthorized clients if they want to have a leg to stand on in court.