Who said any given individual has to sue said company?
Anybody who wants to profit from the idea can do the suing - in other words, big companies can kick each other's asses. Let our opponents do the work for us.
Our goal is simply to free the ideas.
How are you going to protect any idea from being expropriated and closed if it isn't out in the open for everybody to use?
Anybody who thinks the patent system can be renovated is living in a fool's paradise. The government is owned by the big corporations, and they aren't going to change short of being shot.
The problem is not the concept, but the implementation.
Without some solution to the problem of conceptual processing, Xanadu cannot be made to work, certainly not on the scale Ted has envisioned since the beginning.
And the experience over twenty years of trying to make it work clearly shows that it cannot work without some fundamental breakthrough in knowledge representation technology.
Now it might be possible to get the Web to allow "links in", as he puts it. AJAX is sort of a baby step to that possibility, perhaps. If your Web browser can run JavaScript to access a server database and update your page without reloading the entire page, I see no reason why it can't send a request to the server to access some sort of Google-index of all links to the page you're looking at, select links on some specified basis, and retrieve and send those links to your browser. The browser would receive only the links, not the entire pages, and could then organize them in some way, and present them to you in some overview form (assuming there are many), and then you could browse around in them, retrieving the pages they link to as desired.
The problem would be organizing them in some rational way - it might not be very well-done without conceptual processing, but something might be done along the lines of what the desktop search tools like Copernic and Google try to do. In other words, the browser might need to be integrated with a desktop search engine in some manner.
Just a (hazy) thought.
Nice to see Ted is still around, though. I listened to him at a West Coast Computer Faire back in the eighties, when he said there was no acceptable software on the market. He was right then, and he's still right about that now.
You're right. As I've said many times about Lawrence Lessig, he's fighting his battles with both hands tied behind him because he believes in IP as a legitimate basic concept - and it's not.
Given that the situation is NOT going to change, however, I suppose he's doing the best he can. IP is a side issue - the real (political) problem is how the rich and the state conspire to keep everybody else poor and oppressed.
And the real problem underlying all of that is how stupid and fearful the average human monkey is.
And that's not a solvable proposition until you replace humans with Transhumans. Which fortunately IS going to happen within the next fifty years or so.
In other words, my usual bottom line: They're all going to die. We Transhumans won't. Have a nice day.
Only thing wrong with your rant: where did you see a "free market" in any of this?
The entire economy of the world is regulated and controlled by the state - which in turn is bribed and financed by the rich. There's nothing "free" about any of that.
As for the US military situation, I personally hope the US gets bombed back into the Stone Age as soon as possible (excluding my personal location, of course!) - or at least Washington, D.C. and related locations where the assholes of the world hang out. While this would undoubtedly disrupt the world situation for a couple decades (or less), the human species would continue rolling on nicely without the US. This country is definitely overdue for a reality check - and I don't think we'll have to wait too much longer to get it.
So I don't give a damn if China is manufacturing all our military hardware. More power to them.
As for a two-class society, where have you been for the last two hundred years? There's no such thing as a "middle-class", and never has been. And there's even less of one these days. You're either a peon or you're not, it's that simple.
No, you'd much rather be babbling on/. and demonstrating that you have no intellectual property.
The slam at Google was particularly stupid, BTW:
"Supporters of the Google project say copyright is protected because many of the works being initially scanned in are old texts not by living authors.
Google said in a statement on Monday that it offers protection to copyright holders. For newer books still in copyright, users will only see a list of contents and a few sentences of text.
Only older, out-of-copyright books from Oxford University and from the New York Public Library will be scanned into the Google system."
There's a market for homemade rips of Spiderman, too, BTW. And anybody buying them is not in the market for the real DVD, anyway, so they're not relevant.
For that matter, there's a market for porn, if you haven't heard.
None of which is relevant to the coercive landgrab known as "intellectual property".
Your moral righteousness reeks like the last dump I took in the toilet.
The free market (and I agree - IF IT EXISTED) would take care of the game theory cooperation problem. That is merely a restatement of the concept of monopoly profit. Every new business concept starts out as monopoly profit, then the concept is invested in by others, reducing the rate of return to the "general rate of return" (usually around 2-3% IIRC).
This is why coercion doesn't work. If it works, people invest in it until everyone is spending all their resources on either seizing other people's property or protecting their own, and nothing gets produced to be seized or protected.
In other words, if humans had the rationality they claim - and not the absurd fear of death that rules their every action - they would think in the long term and realize that following such principles as coercion or non-cooperation is ultimately unworkable because of the feedback effect of any form of monopoly profit.
The only way to make it work is to innovate AND cooperate. This accelerates the development of new products and concepts, reduces the cost to the general rate of return quickly, at the same time producing (short-lived but continuous) profit for the inventors and cheaper and better goods for the entire species. A rising tide raises all boats.
Naturally all principles of action are in conflict to some degree. The key is balance and recognition that markets are imperfect, as is any human action. A Taoist approach to human economic behavior would do much to alleviate stresses in the system.
Keep in mind - the prisoner's dilemma applies mostly to prisoners. And humans are prisoners of one all-pervasive emotion - fear.
"The idea is if you cannot restrict freedom of use of your invention, too little effort will be spent developing new things since both the inventor and everyone else gets the full benefits (so everyone free rides and nothing gets invented). Sure the Tesla's of the world might well continue to research, but there are many others who would do something else."
Never been proven. Not even a shed of evidence. Pure theory. Doesn't even follow from conventional or even Austrian economic theory.
Total bullshit intended to cover up the artificial extension of contract law over basic free market property principles.
Purely an excuse to cover up the control of others for one's own benefit at the expense of everyone else.
Simple - do what the guy in the "Accelerando" sci-fi story did - think up anything and everything yourself, patent it or copyright or trademark it, then release the IP into the public domain (or barter it to companies in exchange for free whatever for the rest of your life).
No matter how crazy, copyright or patent or trademark it, then give it away. Then nobody can do it later.
Use the system against itself - true martial arts.
"firms increasingly rely on innovation to remain competitive. Yet the return on investment in R&D is short-lived because more people innovate at a far faster pace than before. That means margins have shrivelled, explains Ragu Gurumurthy of Adventis, an IT and telecoms consultancy. "How to recoup the cost of innovation? By licensing the technology," he says."
In other words, we don't know how to compete by innovating and marketing, so we're going to stop innovating and use the state to make our money for us.
Actually, I don't have to concede anything like that.
"I've installed, and uninstalled Linux at least 20 times, and getting the system to a state I'm comfortable with is nie impossible."
Since millions of others have done it, including a lot of non-geeks, obviously you have a problem - either with your hardware or your expectations or your previous OS experience (I won't suggest anything more damaging to your reputation.) I've read the stories of a lot of people who have had problems - most of them were using hardware that could only be called "baroque".
Secondly, Linux adoption has absolutely NOTHING to do with drivers. I seriously doubt that those people who have NOT tried Linux are doing so because of hardware problems because THEY DON'T KNOW about any hardware problems (most have never heard of Linux itself). I also seriously doubt that any significant number of those people who HAVE tried Linux (possibly leaving out laptop users where there are problems due to the extremely proprietary nature of most laptop hardware) - and rejected it - have rejected it because of hardware problems. More likely it's been because of inability to cope with the differences from Windows (which is absolutely not Linux's fault, it's an inability to learn by the user.)
Linux adoption has nothing whatever to do with hardware support. Linux runs on FAR more hardware than Windows will ever do - and I'm talking entire architectures here, not just specific PC hardware.
Certainly SOME people will install Linux and find out their wireless card doesn't work or the sound chip was not detected, or some such, and reject it. Nobody is saying that doesn't happen and probably with some frequency.
But it's a long way from that to PROVING that "Linux has poor hardware support" and even FURTHER away from proving that this has anything significant to do with OVERALL Linux adoption by end users.
As I've said repeatedly, the PRIMARY cause of slow Linux adoption by end users (as opposed to corporations) is a combination of IGNORANCE and INERTIA - nothing more.
Probably. Were they referring to the drivers that come with Windows or the ones supplied by the manufacturer?
I wouldn't be surprised if either of them were to blame. Most likely the manufacturer drivers would be buggy because they were in a rush to get the hardware to market and shortchanged the software development (despite not being rocket science). And Windows drivers have a long history of being buggy - even one of Microsoft's executives admitted that during the monopoly trial as I recall.
Besides, any Linux geek who buys the latest stuff will end up writing the drivers himself since he wants to use the latest stuff. That benefits everybody (provided he has some clue what he's doing) including the average user. At least it helps until the manufacturer produces a driver or somebody else with more competence does so. An entire project might be established around certain classes of drivers, such as those for winmodems, TV cards, and the like. It doesn't take long to get some sort of driver to appear for most hardware.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if problems with Linux drivers were mostly for hardware that ISN'T selling well either because it's too high end, too expensive, or doesn't work well in any event. Weed out those drivers and compare to the availability of drivers with more common hardware and I suspect the problem is overblown.
In Linux, the problem with video drivers is simply lack of manufacturer support. If the manufacturers would spend a week porting their drivers (this isn't rocket science), there would be a very easy way to install them. I don't understand why IBM doesn't do what Microsoft does - offer financial incentives to make a driver by picking up part of the development cost (which, again, can't be that huge.)
No, Linux is not "uber-1337". There is no reason UNDER THE CURRENT CONDITIONS of lack of vendor support that it should be expected to be able to run anything. Given vendor support, the issue goes away. So what's your point? The article was about WHY it is this way, and has nothing to do with the underlying quality of the OS.
So Mandriva doesn't make it easy to find the free download page - big deal. This is hardly "under-handed", it's just lame. Compared to Microsoft's business tactics, this doesn't even show up in an electron microscope. I'm not even sure it's deliberate - it could well be simple "geek moron" behavior, as I've mentioned before. Begging you to join their Club before letting you follow the links to the download page is just that - begging.
As for $20, that's on eBay. There are plenty of places you can get entire distros for $2.50 a CD. And testing ten different distros to see which is "best" is both a waste of time and only suitable for geeks. I occasionally download a live CD to see if something is interesting, but I have no particular desire to replace my Mandriva 2005 LE until Mandriva 2006 shows up on the public mirrors in a few weeks. Ninety percent of Linux is identical between distros - the remaining ten percent has to do with configuration utilities and package management utilities, plus whatever additional packages the distro wants to include as the default. Basically of no interest, unless you want a distro optimized for some subset of interest, such as multimedia or security. And since you can install anything on anything given ability to install from source (and that difficulty is heavily overblown), it's mostly irrelevant - especially since, as I said, the average consumer has never heard of these distros and wouldn't know what to do with them if they did.
And again, since ninety percent of distros are unknown to anybody but professional Linux-installation geeks, it's irrelevant how they charge for it. You're basically paying for the hobby of installing Linux, not the software, anyway.
None of this is relevant to why Linux isn't being used by the average consumer. Far and away, the main reason is a combination of ignorance of the existence of Linux and inertia by those who really don't particularly care what OS they run - as long as it's working for the present and for the minimal tasks for which they use the computer.
The only reason corporate America hasn't switched is less ignorance of the existence of Linux than it is ignorance of the benefits of open source over the long run, versus the inertia of sticking with the crap their people already know and to which they're wedded by bad IT decisions in the past concerning infrastructure design. That, and the lack of enterprise apps, which take time and organization to produce, so Linux doesn't have that many - yet. The latter problem will go away within ten years as OSS Java infrastructures make developing enterprise apps easier. We're already seeing that to some degree in a couple of enterprise areas such as CRM.
The only real usability problem Linux has is the same one Windows has - a lot of software is produced by what I call "geek morons": brilliant guys at writing software to do something cool, but completely incompetent at either producing a useful GUI or producing documentation or both.
I had to learn both Linux and Windows over the last three years, and as I've said numerous times before, there isn't a penny's worth of difference in usability or learnability between them. It's only hard to learn one or the other if you've already learned one.
And before you bring up Apple, which people HAVE heard of, note that they've also heard that Apple is expensive (and they've never heard of the Mac Mini, either.)
People don't migrate because they have NEVER HEARD OF Linux.
Ask the average sod on the street if he's ever heard of Linux. No way, Jose. People don't read IT magazines, and don't read technical articles in ordinary magazines unless they are in the business.
Put Linux as the cover article for Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, TV Guide, Cosmopolitan, etc. and point that in each article that it works like Windows but is FREE - and see what you get. Add Linux ads on "Desperate Housewives" and MTV and see what you get.
Until then, it's bullshit to say that everybody is "comfortable" - the stats on spyware and people throwing their computers in the trash and corporations reporting spyware and security the number one problem in their business say otherwise.
I don't know where to begin - virtually everything you said is total bullshit.
"what would typically be a simple task in Windows (i.e. installing video card drivers) becomes an exercise in frustration in Linux."
Wrong - installation of Linux is easier than Windows PROVIDED the hardware is supported - which is the point of the article. If the manufacturers refuse to support Linux because they are being bribed by Microsoft (and incredibly charged by Microsoft for developing drivers, why they put up with that is insane), Linux has a problem, sure. The Chinese will solve that one in due time and put the US hardware manufacturers out of business in the process, as the article states. US IT hardware manufacturers (ARE there any who don't buy components from Asia?) are doomed. Resellers like Dell will go down as well.
Meanwhile, the only REAL hardware problems with Linux relate to stuff that is extremely new or stuff that is incredibly old. People who want to use Linux shouldn't buy a video or wireless card that came out last week, it's that simple.
Another thing that needs to be done is that the big corps who DO support Linux - like IBM - need to start leaning on the peripheral manufacturers. Here, again, I expect IBM's deep connection with the Chinese will produce results.
"how many different distros are there, and how many of those distros can you typically find easy-to-install driver/software packages for?"
Utterly irrelevant. Nine-nine percent of the existing distros are used by people (read: geeks) who happen to like installing new distros. Any NORMAL consumer will end up with Red Hat/Fedora, Mandriva, SUSE, Sun JDS, or possibly Debian (and maybe Linspire) - for all of which there are easy-to-install software package management systems and available software.
The average consumer has never HEARD of any other Linux distro and never will. In fact, the main issue with the uptake in Linux is simply the fact that ninety-nine percent of the computer buying public has STILL never heard of Linux at all.
"And for something that's supposed to be free, I find it quite amusing how many distros' developers end up devising some under-handed method to charge for their work."
Clueless. Linux is supposed to be free-as-in-freedom. It does not have to be "free-as-in-beer" - but ninety percent of the time it is if you have the bandwidth to download a few CD ISOs or you can afford twenty bucks to buy CDs on eBay. Virtually all the big distros make their money on various methods of support. Why is that underhanded? Nobody said they have to work for free even if the software is free. Is it better that Microsoft charges a minimum of $100 for their OS (and we're talking the obsolete Windows 98 here) and THEN charges a couple hundred for support?
"Insightful", my ass. There should be a mod for "clueless and arrogant" - or maybe "Windows shill."
"You want musicians to earn money from live performance only"
I didn't say that. I said that's (eventually) the only way they're GOING to be able to earn money, as technology eliminates the CD and any other MATERIAL means of distributing music.
You can't take two hours to listen to a concert. So what? You do the same thing you do today - record the concert and listen to it when you want - including at work (of course, you'll need a dual monitor to view it - or just don't bother with the video.) You obviously don't understand my point.
"And if I'm paying to time-shift a performance, maybe I want to get the engineered studio performance."
Nothing unengineered about a live video performance over the Net. It can be just as "produced" as an album except for the actual voice processing and overdubs - and to a large degree, even that could be done, I suppose, with the right tech.
Irrelevant to my point in any event. There's nothing stopping you from getting a studio produced piece of music from the band - it's not that they don't produce it, it's how they DISTRIBUTE it. If they use it as a loss leader for live performances, you still get your music. You just get it free or for very low cost. Gotta problem with that? I didn't think so.
"A lot of people make a lot of money from following it. Maybe it's starting to earn them less money, due to alternative distribution mechanisms; nonetheless it still works."
Never said it didn't - NOW. But in the future, when broadband networks are even more ubiquitous than they are no, it won't. You think CD's are "forever"? Get serious. I know some people even today buy 33 phono records because they know that the sound quality of a WELL-PRODUCED phono record is even better than a CD, but they are in the very tiny minority. You think it's going to be any different in the future with CDs?
"They are making money through broadcast of their music on radio and television, through use of their music as background to sporting events, etc. Oddly enough, it's all studio music that is used for these things - not the live performance."
Irrelevant to my point - all these things can continue to be done. I never said they couldn't.
I'm simply saying that artists can make MORE money by doing live performances over the Net by subscription than they can producing CDs - at some point, probably starting now if they try. I suspect the Corrs could get a million fans to pay five or ten bucks a month to see a live performance once a week. Do the math. That's FAR more than they'll ever get selling CDs to those same fans. That's also monetizing your time FAR more than any live concert tour can do - and it's a lot easier because there's no transporting tons of equipment, no dealing with venues (other than the bandwidth supplier), no jet lag, yada yada. You'd have to be stupid or nuts not to see the advantages. Which is not to say they can't ALSO live tour, but they can do it more casually because it's financed by other means.
My position isn't ludicrous - it's just obviously not comprehensible to you, since all your objections have nothing to do with my point. No imagination, apparently - like most of the artists' management, I guess.
That's what all the fans in the US are complaining about!
With acts like Celtic Woman making waves in the US, you'd think the Corrs - being three hot babes and five good-looking guys as well as being musically talented - would go down at least as well as somebody like Shakira who has nothing to show but her butt and some showmanship.
The problem apparently is a combination of things, including the consolidation of the US radio market into "music genres" that the Corrs - a combo of pop rock and Irish traditional - are too hard to fit into. They even had trouble initially in the UK until they covered Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" on one album and that took off back in the late 90's. Now they're accepted big time there, as well as all over Europe, Asia and Australia.
Their current album, which is sort of a "get lost, record label" album, being mostly traditional Irish songs done in a contemporary style, has just jumped on the Irish charts at #1, and the European and World charts at pretty good positions, and this album has had almost no promotion at all, other than a few radio interviews in the last few weeks. They don't even care if this one is commercial (it's based on songs their late mother played with their father in their parents band), yet it's being noticed pretty well in Europe and Asia.
I think another problem is they have a "squeaky-clean", "family band" image that doesn't go down well in the US. People think they're something like the Osmonds, which is far from the case. Andrea has said they could drink the two guys from Oasis under the table any time... They don't do stupid stuff, they're very professional, but they aren't "bubble gum" or "sweet" and neither is most of their music or their shows. It's pop rock, but no worse than anybody else in that genre, and their traditional Irish instrumentals can literally put 50,000 people in a stadium on their feet jumping, whether it's in Ireland, France or Malaysia. I've got the videos proving this.
The only significant single hit they've had in the US was "Breathless", which sold over one million copies. Although several movie soundtracks have used their music, including Disney and a Julia Roberts movie. The funny thing is, practically before they were anybody, they were featured on an episode of "Beverly Hills 90210" back in 1995 doing a New Year's Eve show! So they had early US exposure.
This is a band that has gone platinum in twenty countries, usually sells about four million of each album (except the last one which disappointed at 1.5 million worldwide), and gets treated like the Beatles in Asia, Australia, Spain, France, and other countries that like good-looking babes who can also play music.
They've been everywhere and done concerts with everybody from Celine Dion to the Rolling Stones to U2 to Pavarotti, Nelson Mandela and the Pope. I mean, Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood dig them, how weird is that? I understand Bono, since he's Irish and has the hots for Andrea...
How the US market can continue to ignore them is a mystery to the US fans - and apparently to the Corrs and their management team.
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Who said any given individual has to sue said company?
Anybody who wants to profit from the idea can do the suing - in other words, big companies can kick each other's asses. Let our opponents do the work for us.
Our goal is simply to free the ideas.
How are you going to protect any idea from being expropriated and closed if it isn't out in the open for everybody to use?
Anybody who thinks the patent system can be renovated is living in a fool's paradise. The government is owned by the big corporations, and they aren't going to change short of being shot.
The problem is not the concept, but the implementation.
Without some solution to the problem of conceptual processing, Xanadu cannot be made to work, certainly not on the scale Ted has envisioned since the beginning.
And the experience over twenty years of trying to make it work clearly shows that it cannot work without some fundamental breakthrough in knowledge representation technology.
Now it might be possible to get the Web to allow "links in", as he puts it. AJAX is sort of a baby step to that possibility, perhaps. If your Web browser can run JavaScript to access a server database and update your page without reloading the entire page, I see no reason why it can't send a request to the server to access some sort of Google-index of all links to the page you're looking at, select links on some specified basis, and retrieve and send those links to your browser. The browser would receive only the links, not the entire pages, and could then organize them in some way, and present them to you in some overview form (assuming there are many), and then you could browse around in them, retrieving the pages they link to as desired.
The problem would be organizing them in some rational way - it might not be very well-done without conceptual processing, but something might be done along the lines of what the desktop search tools like Copernic and Google try to do. In other words, the browser might need to be integrated with a desktop search engine in some manner.
Just a (hazy) thought.
Nice to see Ted is still around, though. I listened to him at a West Coast Computer Faire back in the eighties, when he said there was no acceptable software on the market. He was right then, and he's still right about that now.
Well, don't patent it then!
Just release it into the public domain so it acts as "prior art".
Same result.
You're right. As I've said many times about Lawrence Lessig, he's fighting his battles with both hands tied behind him because he believes in IP as a legitimate basic concept - and it's not.
Given that the situation is NOT going to change, however, I suppose he's doing the best he can. IP is a side issue - the real (political) problem is how the rich and the state conspire to keep everybody else poor and oppressed.
And the real problem underlying all of that is how stupid and fearful the average human monkey is.
And that's not a solvable proposition until you replace humans with Transhumans. Which fortunately IS going to happen within the next fifty years or so.
In other words, my usual bottom line: They're all going to die. We Transhumans won't. Have a nice day.
Only thing wrong with your rant: where did you see a "free market" in any of this?
The entire economy of the world is regulated and controlled by the state - which in turn is bribed and financed by the rich. There's nothing "free" about any of that.
As for the US military situation, I personally hope the US gets bombed back into the Stone Age as soon as possible (excluding my personal location, of course!) - or at least Washington, D.C. and related locations where the assholes of the world hang out. While this would undoubtedly disrupt the world situation for a couple decades (or less), the human species would continue rolling on nicely without the US. This country is definitely overdue for a reality check - and I don't think we'll have to wait too much longer to get it.
So I don't give a damn if China is manufacturing all our military hardware. More power to them.
As for a two-class society, where have you been for the last two hundred years? There's no such thing as a "middle-class", and never has been. And there's even less of one these days. You're either a peon or you're not, it's that simple.
No, you'd much rather be babbling on
The slam at Google was particularly stupid, BTW:
"Supporters of the Google project say copyright is protected because many of the works being initially scanned in are old texts not by living authors.
Google said in a statement on Monday that it offers protection to copyright holders. For newer books still in copyright, users will only see a list of contents and a few sentences of text.
Only older, out-of-copyright books from Oxford University and from the New York Public Library will be scanned into the Google system."
There's a market for homemade rips of Spiderman, too, BTW. And anybody buying them is not in the market for the real DVD, anyway, so they're not relevant.
For that matter, there's a market for porn, if you haven't heard.
None of which is relevant to the coercive landgrab known as "intellectual property".
Your moral righteousness reeks like the last dump I took in the toilet.
The free market (and I agree - IF IT EXISTED) would take care of the game theory cooperation problem. That is merely a restatement of the concept of monopoly profit. Every new business concept starts out as monopoly profit, then the concept is invested in by others, reducing the rate of return to the "general rate of return" (usually around 2-3% IIRC).
This is why coercion doesn't work. If it works, people invest in it until everyone is spending all their resources on either seizing other people's property or protecting their own, and nothing gets produced to be seized or protected.
In other words, if humans had the rationality they claim - and not the absurd fear of death that rules their every action - they would think in the long term and realize that following such principles as coercion or non-cooperation is ultimately unworkable because of the feedback effect of any form of monopoly profit.
The only way to make it work is to innovate AND cooperate. This accelerates the development of new products and concepts, reduces the cost to the general rate of return quickly, at the same time producing (short-lived but continuous) profit for the inventors and cheaper and better goods for the entire species. A rising tide raises all boats.
Naturally all principles of action are in conflict to some degree. The key is balance and recognition that markets are imperfect, as is any human action. A Taoist approach to human economic behavior would do much to alleviate stresses in the system.
Keep in mind - the prisoner's dilemma applies mostly to prisoners. And humans are prisoners of one all-pervasive emotion - fear.
So stop being a prisoner.
"The idea is if you cannot restrict freedom of use of your invention, too little effort will be spent developing new things since both the inventor and everyone else gets the full benefits (so everyone free rides and nothing gets invented). Sure the Tesla's of the world might well continue to research, but there are many others who would do something else."
Never been proven. Not even a shed of evidence. Pure theory. Doesn't even follow from conventional or even Austrian economic theory.
Total bullshit intended to cover up the artificial extension of contract law over basic free market property principles.
Purely an excuse to cover up the control of others for one's own benefit at the expense of everyone else.
Simple - do what the guy in the "Accelerando" sci-fi story did - think up anything and everything yourself, patent it or copyright or trademark it, then release the IP into the public domain (or barter it to companies in exchange for free whatever for the rest of your life).
No matter how crazy, copyright or patent or trademark it, then give it away. Then nobody can do it later.
Use the system against itself - true martial arts.
"firms increasingly rely on innovation to remain competitive. Yet the return on investment in R&D is short-lived because more people innovate at a far faster pace than before. That means margins have shrivelled, explains Ragu Gurumurthy of Adventis, an IT and telecoms consultancy. "How to recoup the cost of innovation? By licensing the technology," he says."
In other words, we don't know how to compete by innovating and marketing, so we're going to stop innovating and use the state to make our money for us.
Typical corporate thinking.
'I have never, honestly, thrown a chair in my life,'
You've never done ANYTHING honestly in your life, Steve.
Can you say the words "lying sack of shit"?
I knew you could.
Typical educational system. Typical educational administrators. Typical software company. Typical humans.
Read Marcus Ranum's rant about "Stupid on Software" involving a bank buying a system with absolutely NO security - then trying to ADD-ON the security.
And the first page of
Morons, the lot.
Actually, I don't have to concede anything like that.
"I've installed, and uninstalled Linux at least 20 times, and getting the system to a state I'm comfortable with is nie impossible."
Since millions of others have done it, including a lot of non-geeks, obviously you have a problem - either with your hardware or your expectations or your previous OS experience (I won't suggest anything more damaging to your reputation.) I've read the stories of a lot of people who have had problems - most of them were using hardware that could only be called "baroque".
Secondly, Linux adoption has absolutely NOTHING to do with drivers. I seriously doubt that those people who have NOT tried Linux are doing so because of hardware problems because THEY DON'T KNOW about any hardware problems (most have never heard of Linux itself). I also seriously doubt that any significant number of those people who HAVE tried Linux (possibly leaving out laptop users where there are problems due to the extremely proprietary nature of most laptop hardware) - and rejected it - have rejected it because of hardware problems. More likely it's been because of inability to cope with the differences from Windows (which is absolutely not Linux's fault, it's an inability to learn by the user.)
Linux adoption has nothing whatever to do with hardware support. Linux runs on FAR more hardware than Windows will ever do - and I'm talking entire architectures here, not just specific PC hardware.
Certainly SOME people will install Linux and find out their wireless card doesn't work or the sound chip was not detected, or some such, and reject it. Nobody is saying that doesn't happen and probably with some frequency.
But it's a long way from that to PROVING that "Linux has poor hardware support" and even FURTHER away from proving that this has anything significant to do with OVERALL Linux adoption by end users.
As I've said repeatedly, the PRIMARY cause of slow Linux adoption by end users (as opposed to corporations) is a combination of IGNORANCE and INERTIA - nothing more.
Assume intelligence at
You must be new here.
Probably. Were they referring to the drivers that come with Windows or the ones supplied by the manufacturer?
I wouldn't be surprised if either of them were to blame. Most likely the manufacturer drivers would be buggy because they were in a rush to get the hardware to market and shortchanged the software development (despite not being rocket science). And Windows drivers have a long history of being buggy - even one of Microsoft's executives admitted that during the monopoly trial as I recall.
Besides, any Linux geek who buys the latest stuff will end up writing the drivers himself since he wants to use the latest stuff. That benefits everybody (provided he has some clue what he's doing) including the average user. At least it helps until the manufacturer produces a driver or somebody else with more competence does so. An entire project might be established around certain classes of drivers, such as those for winmodems, TV cards, and the like. It doesn't take long to get some sort of driver to appear for most hardware.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if problems with Linux drivers were mostly for hardware that ISN'T selling well either because it's too high end, too expensive, or doesn't work well in any event. Weed out those drivers and compare to the availability of drivers with more common hardware and I suspect the problem is overblown.
In Linux, the problem with video drivers is simply lack of manufacturer support. If the manufacturers would spend a week porting their drivers (this isn't rocket science), there would be a very easy way to install them. I don't understand why IBM doesn't do what Microsoft does - offer financial incentives to make a driver by picking up part of the development cost (which, again, can't be that huge.)
No, Linux is not "uber-1337". There is no reason UNDER THE CURRENT CONDITIONS of lack of vendor support that it should be expected to be able to run anything. Given vendor support, the issue goes away. So what's your point? The article was about WHY it is this way, and has nothing to do with the underlying quality of the OS.
So Mandriva doesn't make it easy to find the free download page - big deal. This is hardly "under-handed", it's just lame. Compared to Microsoft's business tactics, this doesn't even show up in an electron microscope. I'm not even sure it's deliberate - it could well be simple "geek moron" behavior, as I've mentioned before. Begging you to join their Club before letting you follow the links to the download page is just that - begging.
As for $20, that's on eBay. There are plenty of places you can get entire distros for $2.50 a CD. And testing ten different distros to see which is "best" is both a waste of time and only suitable for geeks. I occasionally download a live CD to see if something is interesting, but I have no particular desire to replace my Mandriva 2005 LE until Mandriva 2006 shows up on the public mirrors in a few weeks. Ninety percent of Linux is identical between distros - the remaining ten percent has to do with configuration utilities and package management utilities, plus whatever additional packages the distro wants to include as the default. Basically of no interest, unless you want a distro optimized for some subset of interest, such as multimedia or security. And since you can install anything on anything given ability to install from source (and that difficulty is heavily overblown), it's mostly irrelevant - especially since, as I said, the average consumer has never heard of these distros and wouldn't know what to do with them if they did.
And again, since ninety percent of distros are unknown to anybody but professional Linux-installation geeks, it's irrelevant how they charge for it. You're basically paying for the hobby of installing Linux, not the software, anyway.
None of this is relevant to why Linux isn't being used by the average consumer. Far and away, the main reason is a combination of ignorance of the existence of Linux and inertia by those who really don't particularly care what OS they run - as long as it's working for the present and for the minimal tasks for which they use the computer.
The only reason corporate America hasn't switched is less ignorance of the existence of Linux than it is ignorance of the benefits of open source over the long run, versus the inertia of sticking with the crap their people already know and to which they're wedded by bad IT decisions in the past concerning infrastructure design. That, and the lack of enterprise apps, which take time and organization to produce, so Linux doesn't have that many - yet. The latter problem will go away within ten years as OSS Java infrastructures make developing enterprise apps easier. We're already seeing that to some degree in a couple of enterprise areas such as CRM.
The only real usability problem Linux has is the same one Windows has - a lot of software is produced by what I call "geek morons": brilliant guys at writing software to do something cool, but completely incompetent at either producing a useful GUI or producing documentation or both.
I had to learn both Linux and Windows over the last three years, and as I've said numerous times before, there isn't a penny's worth of difference in usability or learnability between them. It's only hard to learn one or the other if you've already learned one.
I still use Windows most of the
And before you bring up Apple, which people HAVE heard of, note that they've also heard that Apple is expensive (and they've never heard of the Mac Mini, either.)
So much for Apple.
Bullshit.
People don't migrate because they have NEVER HEARD OF Linux.
Ask the average sod on the street if he's ever heard of Linux. No way, Jose. People don't read IT magazines, and don't read technical articles in ordinary magazines unless they are in the business.
Put Linux as the cover article for Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, TV Guide, Cosmopolitan, etc. and point that in each article that it works like Windows but is FREE - and see what you get. Add Linux ads on "Desperate Housewives" and MTV and see what you get.
Until then, it's bullshit to say that everybody is "comfortable" - the stats on spyware and people throwing their computers in the trash and corporations reporting spyware and security the number one problem in their business say otherwise.
I don't know where to begin - virtually everything you said is total bullshit.
"what would typically be a simple task in Windows (i.e. installing video card drivers) becomes an exercise in frustration in Linux."
Wrong - installation of Linux is easier than Windows PROVIDED the hardware is supported - which is the point of the article. If the manufacturers refuse to support Linux because they are being bribed by Microsoft (and incredibly charged by Microsoft for developing drivers, why they put up with that is insane), Linux has a problem, sure. The Chinese will solve that one in due time and put the US hardware manufacturers out of business in the process, as the article states. US IT hardware manufacturers (ARE there any who don't buy components from Asia?) are doomed. Resellers like Dell will go down as well.
Meanwhile, the only REAL hardware problems with Linux relate to stuff that is extremely new or stuff that is incredibly old. People who want to use Linux shouldn't buy a video or wireless card that came out last week, it's that simple.
Another thing that needs to be done is that the big corps who DO support Linux - like IBM - need to start leaning on the peripheral manufacturers. Here, again, I expect IBM's deep connection with the Chinese will produce results.
"how many different distros are there, and how many of those distros can you typically find easy-to-install driver/software packages for?"
Utterly irrelevant. Nine-nine percent of the existing distros are used by people (read: geeks) who happen to like installing new distros. Any NORMAL consumer will end up with Red Hat/Fedora, Mandriva, SUSE, Sun JDS, or possibly Debian (and maybe Linspire) - for all of which there are easy-to-install software package management systems and available software.
The average consumer has never HEARD of any other Linux distro and never will. In fact, the main issue with the uptake in Linux is simply the fact that ninety-nine percent of the computer buying public has STILL never heard of Linux at all.
"And for something that's supposed to be free, I find it quite amusing how many distros' developers end up devising some under-handed method to charge for their work."
Clueless. Linux is supposed to be free-as-in-freedom. It does not have to be "free-as-in-beer" - but ninety percent of the time it is if you have the bandwidth to download a few CD ISOs or you can afford twenty bucks to buy CDs on eBay. Virtually all the big distros make their money on various methods of support. Why is that underhanded? Nobody said they have to work for free even if the software is free. Is it better that Microsoft charges a minimum of $100 for their OS (and we're talking the obsolete Windows 98 here) and THEN charges a couple hundred for support?
"Insightful", my ass. There should be a mod for "clueless and arrogant" - or maybe "Windows shill."
He found five copies of Windows which are the only known copies which never crashed during their time in service.
These are so rare that eBay auctioneers have determined their value to be in the millions...
All five are, however, known to be riddled with spyware...
"including an interview with Mr. Bill Gates himself."
Who gives a shit what self-serving crap this asshole has to say?
Shut the fuck up, Bill, you've said far too much already.
Then he's a liar.
Nothing more need be said.
No, a piece of shit is the icon for Access.
And, like most icons, it can serve as an icon for almost all of the Microsoft "solution stack"...
"You want musicians to earn money from live performance only"
I didn't say that. I said that's (eventually) the only way they're GOING to be able to earn money, as technology eliminates the CD and any other MATERIAL means of distributing music.
You can't take two hours to listen to a concert. So what? You do the same thing you do today - record the concert and listen to it when you want - including at work (of course, you'll need a dual monitor to view it - or just don't bother with the video.) You obviously don't understand my point.
"And if I'm paying to time-shift a performance, maybe I want to get the engineered studio performance."
Nothing unengineered about a live video performance over the Net. It can be just as "produced" as an album except for the actual voice processing and overdubs - and to a large degree, even that could be done, I suppose, with the right tech.
Irrelevant to my point in any event. There's nothing stopping you from getting a studio produced piece of music from the band - it's not that they don't produce it, it's how they DISTRIBUTE it. If they use it as a loss leader for live performances, you still get your music. You just get it free or for very low cost. Gotta problem with that? I didn't think so.
"A lot of people make a lot of money from following it. Maybe it's starting to earn them less money, due to alternative distribution mechanisms; nonetheless it still works."
Never said it didn't - NOW. But in the future, when broadband networks are even more ubiquitous than they are no, it won't. You think CD's are "forever"? Get serious. I know some people even today buy 33 phono records because they know that the sound quality of a WELL-PRODUCED phono record is even better than a CD, but they are in the very tiny minority. You think it's going to be any different in the future with CDs?
"They are making money through broadcast of their music on radio and television, through use of their music as background to sporting events, etc. Oddly enough, it's all studio music that is used for these things - not the live performance."
Irrelevant to my point - all these things can continue to be done. I never said they couldn't.
I'm simply saying that artists can make MORE money by doing live performances over the Net by subscription than they can producing CDs - at some point, probably starting now if they try. I suspect the Corrs could get a million fans to pay five or ten bucks a month to see a live performance once a week. Do the math. That's FAR more than they'll ever get selling CDs to those same fans. That's also monetizing your time FAR more than any live concert tour can do - and it's a lot easier because there's no transporting tons of equipment, no dealing with venues (other than the bandwidth supplier), no jet lag, yada yada. You'd have to be stupid or nuts not to see the advantages. Which is not to say they can't ALSO live tour, but they can do it more casually because it's financed by other means.
My position isn't ludicrous - it's just obviously not comprehensible to you, since all your objections have nothing to do with my point. No imagination, apparently - like most of the artists' management, I guess.
That's what all the fans in the US are complaining about!
With acts like Celtic Woman making waves in the US, you'd think the Corrs - being three hot babes and five good-looking guys as well as being musically talented - would go down at least as well as somebody like Shakira who has nothing to show but her butt and some showmanship.
The problem apparently is a combination of things, including the consolidation of the US radio market into "music genres" that the Corrs - a combo of pop rock and Irish traditional - are too hard to fit into. They even had trouble initially in the UK until they covered Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" on one album and that took off back in the late 90's. Now they're accepted big time there, as well as all over Europe, Asia and Australia.
Their current album, which is sort of a "get lost, record label" album, being mostly traditional Irish songs done in a contemporary style, has just jumped on the Irish charts at #1, and the European and World charts at pretty good positions, and this album has had almost no promotion at all, other than a few radio interviews in the last few weeks. They don't even care if this one is commercial (it's based on songs their late mother played with their father in their parents band), yet it's being noticed pretty well in Europe and Asia.
I think another problem is they have a "squeaky-clean", "family band" image that doesn't go down well in the US. People think they're something like the Osmonds, which is far from the case. Andrea has said they could drink the two guys from Oasis under the table any time... They don't do stupid stuff, they're very professional, but they aren't "bubble gum" or "sweet" and neither is most of their music or their shows. It's pop rock, but no worse than anybody else in that genre, and their traditional Irish instrumentals can literally put 50,000 people in a stadium on their feet jumping, whether it's in Ireland, France or Malaysia. I've got the videos proving this.
The only significant single hit they've had in the US was "Breathless", which sold over one million copies. Although several movie soundtracks have used their music, including Disney and a Julia Roberts movie. The funny thing is, practically before they were anybody, they were featured on an episode of "Beverly Hills 90210" back in 1995 doing a New Year's Eve show! So they had early US exposure.
This is a band that has gone platinum in twenty countries, usually sells about four million of each album (except the last one which disappointed at 1.5 million worldwide), and gets treated like the Beatles in Asia, Australia, Spain, France, and other countries that like good-looking babes who can also play music.
They've been everywhere and done concerts with everybody from Celine Dion to the Rolling Stones to U2 to Pavarotti, Nelson Mandela and the Pope. I mean, Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood dig them, how weird is that? I understand Bono, since he's Irish and has the hots for Andrea...
How the US market can continue to ignore them is a mystery to the US fans - and apparently to the Corrs and their management team.
I'd like to be - they need somebody in the US to do promotion for them, since their label seems to be bad at it!