I've seen the "start small" mantra mentioned several times, and just want to say that there are times when... you just can't do that.
"Start small" equates to "take your time", and if you're an actual business doing development of an actual product, you have expenses, salaries, time-to-market issues, and to use a word not applied to often to FOSS: deadlines.
Part of what the OP is talking about is paying for complete solutions, and a place to go and people to talk to when you run into problems. Not just a forum where a posted question can sit unnswered for weeks, and the development team frustrated by a bug does likewise.
And this is actually where FOSS runs into issues. Since the vast majority of market doesn't pay for the product, nor for support, you end up having low demand for an expensive to provide service, which equates to... high prices.
MS needs to take [another] page from the Apple playbook and quit trying to monetize each and every price point.
Apple makes just two version of OSX, the end-user version and the server version, and you can get a new copy of the end-user version for $103 at Amazon.
No Basic, Home, Office, Media, Extended, Enterprise, DataCenter, Premium, "super" editions. Just two.
You need to concentrate on the distribution costs, as there's still going to be a "retailer", marketing costs, transaction fees, etc.,, no matter what the distribution mechanism.
Let's take the iTMS move store, for example. I submit that the bandwidth needed to download a 1.2GB file has SOME cost, as does building and maintaining the infrastructure needed to ensure that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people can do so simultaneously.
And anytime you want to talk about delivering a million copies of anything I think you'll find the costs are far from inconsequential.
As far as that goes, I'd almost be willing to bet that once those costs are taken into account, the actual costs of delivering a movie online is perhaps only a single order of magnitude away from that of delivering a piece of plastic to a store.
The actual cost of a mass-produced disc is pennies on the dollar anyway. You pay for the content.
"The entire prudence of this Precautionary Principle rests on how to evaluate the evidence of risk."
If they actually DID that I'd agree with you. Unfortunately, all too often they take a hard-line, head-in-the-sand approach and insist that there be NO risk whatsoever. That NO amount of polution or radiation or environmental impact is acceptable.
And that leads to no progress whatsoever.
Someone wants to build a wave-power generation system off the coast. "Oh no," they say. "We don't know the effects of doing that, and the poor little crabs that live on that one mile stretch of beach will be hurt." Of course, we don't know the effects because we've never done it. Can't really evalaute the risks, because we've never done it. And we can never do it, apparently, because we've never done it and as such can't prove with 100% certainty that there are NO risks whatsoever.
Life is about taking risks, and wisdom lies in the ability to know when and how to make acceptable trade-offs. Yes, we may have SOME impact on that stretch of coastline, but in turn we're not dumping a thousand tons of CO2 into the atmosphere over here. Whereapon the greenies turn even greener and say, "No! No coastline impact AND no CO2 AND definitely no solar-cell MANUFACTURING because those use nasty chemicals, and no bad, bad, bird-killing wind-mill farms, and..."...and we end up doing nothing.
Unfortuately, we live in an increasingly litigious and risk-adverse society. Where EVERYTHING must be soft and round-cornered and "safe".
"A 4.5 gig Movie shrunk down to 300 MB? No thanks. You can keep it. If I wanted that kind of quality, I'd attach some rabbit ears and aluminum foil to my TV."
Or watch non-HD digital cable, perhaps. Ever seen the kind of compression they put those broadcasts through?
After comparing DVDs, digital cable, broadcast TV, and a iTMS video, I'd have to say that the download beats eveything but the DVD.
You need to stop guessing as to what the quality looks like. Apple's current offering's may only be 640-wide, but a DVD is only 720; not that big of a gap. Plus DVD's are an "old" technology, locked into an old compression system.
Modern codecs have gottent a LOT better at shrinking files and still maintaining a good level of quality.
People use Google because, by and large, it does a better job than anyone else. But Google is in a tenuous position, and, I think, a bit paranoid, because anyone who figures out how to do it better can build a 'bot, crawl the web, and put up a web site. And their traffic can shrink to a trickle in a second.
Just look at how fast people deserted Alta Vista.
And that is, BTW, why Google is sticking their fingers into so many pies. Because when someone DOES do it better, they still want to have some kind of a business left.
Remember the story of the guy who rode in the parade chariot with the Emperor, whispering into his ear, saying "This too, shall pass."
Uh... I submit that the bandwidth needed to download a 1.2GB file has SOME cost, as does building and maintaining the infrastructure needed to ensure that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people can do so simultaneously.
Anytime you want to talk about delivering a million copies of anything I think you'll find the costs are far from inconsequential.
As far as that goes, I'd almost be willing to bet that once those costs are taken into account, the actual costs of delivering a movie online is perhaps only a single order of magnitude away from that of delivering a piece of plastic to a store.
The actual cost of a mass-produced disc is pennies on the dollar anyway. You pay for the content.
How did AMD go from record growth and being the darling of enthusiasts to having a new platform which failed to impress?"
Question asked, question answered. It failed to impress, and they let Intel jump ahead.
One only has to look at the seesaw video card wars between ATI and NVIDIA to realize the truth. The people who care about such things are a fickle lot. Let one or the other realize a huge gain in performance and odds are that most people--even "loyal" customers--will jump ship in a second.
And if you don't care about such things, then... well, you don't care. So there's no demand, and you might as well have a hamster cage inside the box.
Most search engines will NOT pay, as it then sets a precedent for everyone to make the same request. Having to pay EVERYONE would put them out of business.
Unfortunately, we're not the ones that have to line up. All they have to do today is name the bill the "Child Protection Act of 2006" and most of the politician's hands are automatically tied. Vote against such a thing and you can bet that come next election your opponents will be touting your apparent love for child pornographers and child molesters in every television ad.
"Jim Davis voted AGAINST a bill that would have protected CHILDREN from dangerous preditors and pedophiles..."
"Why not go F/OSS? Pay developers to write Free Software code. Share resources with other companies having the same need. Less expensive, more features. Everyone is happy:)."
Yes and no. Take Goole or WalMart. In each case a large portion of their competitive advantage comes from their internal IT systems. Search engines at Google and warehouse/inventory management at WalMart. JIT build-to-order systems at Dell. Or trading systems at a brokerage, or scheduling systems at an airline or trucking firm.
In many cases, companies are not going to want to spend large sums of money building and streamlining their internal systems and then hand the results gratis to their competitors.
Slashdot Mirror
From a "real" photographer's business card...
I specialize [sic] in wedding, portrait, boudoir, commercial, industrial, food, model, school, sports, editorial, art, and pet photography.
Heavier, but oddly not enough so to deserve a "2.0" complete version number upgrade.
I've seen the "start small" mantra mentioned several times, and just want to say that there are times when... you just can't do that.
"Start small" equates to "take your time", and if you're an actual business doing development of an actual product, you have expenses, salaries, time-to-market issues, and to use a word not applied to often to FOSS: deadlines.
Part of what the OP is talking about is paying for complete solutions, and a place to go and people to talk to when you run into problems. Not just a forum where a posted question can sit unnswered for weeks, and the development team frustrated by a bug does likewise.
And this is actually where FOSS runs into issues. Since the vast majority of market doesn't pay for the product, nor for support, you end up having low demand for an expensive to provide service, which equates to... high prices.
MS needs to take [another] page from the Apple playbook and quit trying to monetize each and every price point.
Apple makes just two version of OSX, the end-user version and the server version, and you can get a new copy of the end-user version for $103 at Amazon.
No Basic, Home, Office, Media, Extended, Enterprise, DataCenter, Premium, "super" editions. Just two.
And no "activation" keys.
You need to concentrate on the distribution costs, as there's still going to be a "retailer", marketing costs, transaction fees, etc.,, no matter what the distribution mechanism.
"zero cost of production"
Let's take the iTMS move store, for example. I submit that the bandwidth needed to download a 1.2GB file has SOME cost, as does building and maintaining the infrastructure needed to ensure that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people can do so simultaneously.
And anytime you want to talk about delivering a million copies of anything I think you'll find the costs are far from inconsequential.
As far as that goes, I'd almost be willing to bet that once those costs are taken into account, the actual costs of delivering a movie online is perhaps only a single order of magnitude away from that of delivering a piece of plastic to a store.
The actual cost of a mass-produced disc is pennies on the dollar anyway. You pay for the content.
This isn't new. Black helicopters have been using this trick for years now. That's why you can't see them!
"The entire prudence of this Precautionary Principle rests on how to evaluate the evidence of risk."
...and we end up doing nothing.
If they actually DID that I'd agree with you. Unfortunately, all too often they take a hard-line, head-in-the-sand approach and insist that there be NO risk whatsoever. That NO amount of polution or radiation or environmental impact is acceptable.
And that leads to no progress whatsoever.
Someone wants to build a wave-power generation system off the coast. "Oh no," they say. "We don't know the effects of doing that, and the poor little crabs that live on that one mile stretch of beach will be hurt." Of course, we don't know the effects because we've never done it. Can't really evalaute the risks, because we've never done it. And we can never do it, apparently, because we've never done it and as such can't prove with 100% certainty that there are NO risks whatsoever.
Life is about taking risks, and wisdom lies in the ability to know when and how to make acceptable trade-offs. Yes, we may have SOME impact on that stretch of coastline, but in turn we're not dumping a thousand tons of CO2 into the atmosphere over here. Whereapon the greenies turn even greener and say, "No! No coastline impact AND no CO2 AND definitely no solar-cell MANUFACTURING because those use nasty chemicals, and no bad, bad, bird-killing wind-mill farms, and..."
Unfortuately, we live in an increasingly litigious and risk-adverse society. Where EVERYTHING must be soft and round-cornered and "safe".
"A 4.5 gig Movie shrunk down to 300 MB? No thanks. You can keep it. If I wanted that kind of quality, I'd attach some rabbit ears and aluminum foil to my TV."
Or watch non-HD digital cable, perhaps. Ever seen the kind of compression they put those broadcasts through?
After comparing DVDs, digital cable, broadcast TV, and a iTMS video, I'd have to say that the download beats eveything but the DVD.
You need to stop guessing as to what the quality looks like. Apple's current offering's may only be 640-wide, but a DVD is only 720; not that big of a gap. Plus DVD's are an "old" technology, locked into an old compression system.
Modern codecs have gottent a LOT better at shrinking files and still maintaining a good level of quality.
People use Google because, by and large, it does a better job than anyone else. But Google is in a tenuous position, and, I think, a bit paranoid, because anyone who figures out how to do it better can build a 'bot, crawl the web, and put up a web site. And their traffic can shrink to a trickle in a second.
Just look at how fast people deserted Alta Vista.
And that is, BTW, why Google is sticking their fingers into so many pies. Because when someone DOES do it better, they still want to have some kind of a business left.
Remember the story of the guy who rode in the parade chariot with the Emperor, whispering into his ear, saying "This too, shall pass."
"... zero cost to ship any copies..."
Uh... I submit that the bandwidth needed to download a 1.2GB file has SOME cost, as does building and maintaining the infrastructure needed to ensure that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people can do so simultaneously.
Anytime you want to talk about delivering a million copies of anything I think you'll find the costs are far from inconsequential.
As far as that goes, I'd almost be willing to bet that once those costs are taken into account, the actual costs of delivering a movie online is perhaps only a single order of magnitude away from that of delivering a piece of plastic to a store.
The actual cost of a mass-produced disc is pennies on the dollar anyway. You pay for the content.
How did AMD go from record growth and being the darling of enthusiasts to having a new platform which failed to impress?"
Question asked, question answered. It failed to impress, and they let Intel jump ahead.
One only has to look at the seesaw video card wars between ATI and NVIDIA to realize the truth. The people who care about such things are a fickle lot. Let one or the other realize a huge gain in performance and odds are that most people--even "loyal" customers--will jump ship in a second.
And if you don't care about such things, then... well, you don't care. So there's no demand, and you might as well have a hamster cage inside the box.
At a or so page a day (a good clip for an author) it can still take a year or more to write a book. How much do you make in a year?
You're right in that you're not paying for the equipment... but you are paying for the author's time (and food, and rent, and...).
"For people wanting to crank SETI etc, it is going to be way cheaper to build a cluster with 20 4-core systems."
Care to share your advance pricing information? I'm sure that all of us, including Intel, would be interested...
You mean, something like this?
Keep up, will you?
Love all of that well-commented code...
Whether it's a WalMart store or a "distribution" center, someone bought a lot of stuff and put it under one roof.
So even if we choose Situation B, the only difference is that now we're complaining about "DistribUHome" will all the power in the marketplace...
And who, in all likelyhood, is running the same wire service story anyway...
Most search engines will NOT pay, as it then sets a precedent for everyone to make the same request. Having to pay EVERYONE would put them out of business.
"In a photon's frame of reference, it and all other photons would constantly be at rest, since they all move at the same speed."
Huh? Even in the middle of a laser, not all of them are moving in the same DIRECTION, thus relative to one another they are NOT at rest.
What if, say, as an incentive to prepay $3 they give you $4 worth of services? Or $25 worth of service for $20?
The flip side of this is that if they're still running 98 and ME, the fact that MS is dropping support isn't really a factor in their thinking anyway.
Unfortunately, we're not the ones that have to line up. All they have to do today is name the bill the "Child Protection Act of 2006" and most of the politician's hands are automatically tied. Vote against such a thing and you can bet that come next election your opponents will be touting your apparent love for child pornographers and child molesters in every television ad.
"Jim Davis voted AGAINST a bill that would have protected CHILDREN from dangerous preditors and pedophiles..."
"Why not go F/OSS? Pay developers to write Free Software code. Share resources with other companies having the same need. Less expensive, more features. Everyone is happy :)."
Yes and no. Take Goole or WalMart. In each case a large portion of their competitive advantage comes from their internal IT systems. Search engines at Google and warehouse/inventory management at WalMart. JIT build-to-order systems at Dell. Or trading systems at a brokerage, or scheduling systems at an airline or trucking firm.
In many cases, companies are not going to want to spend large sums of money building and streamlining their internal systems and then hand the results gratis to their competitors.
"It's all ball bearings these days!"
No, it was all ball bearings in THOSE days. Had to reach way back for that reference, didn't you?