They aren't an established company like GM or Ford, it makes sense for them to start out with high-end customized vehicles, grow large on that, and then slowly descend into the mass market as economies of scale start to kick in.
Henry Ford's production cars were mass market from Day 1. That distinguished them from almost everything else on the road.
Oldsmobile had pioneered the idea - but the Olds was an toy-like gas buggy:
Now when they go for a spin, you know, She tries to learn the auto, so He lets her steer, while he gets her ear And whispers soft and low... In My Merry Oldsmobile
Ford didn't wait for economies of scale to kick in. His engineers designed economies of scale into the car - into the production line.
Ford was relentless in his drive to eliminate skilled craft work. His four cylinder engine was cast as a single block - a first, I believe.
The Ford Model A and Model T were tough and versatile - mass market sales meant that Ford had real money to spend on R&D.
But Ford did enter the business as a young man. He was very slow in adopting later innovations like the electric starter.
The emphasis on color, style and comfort that marked the entry of the Chevy.
YouTube. It is the model for the future and the model that is being embraced by young people.
For as long as Google is prepared to foot the bill.
But you don't have to produce for the twenty-something market.
The geek always talks about "obsolete business models." He never considers the possibility that marketing to the geek is the obsolete business model.
This new golden age of theatrical animation plays well to audiences of every age. It plays particularly well to the audience that will buy the DVD and Blu-Ray disk.
The three disk set from Amazon that includes a digital download copy and sells for $25. Theoretically at least, that is 150+ GB of content or more than half of your neighbor's monthly download cap.
I'd have a huge garage sale, transfer all my money off shore, then relocate to a country that isn't extradition-friendly to the USA, but still has a nice lifestyle.
Because you were too cheap to rent your videos from Netflix?
I have wondered now and again why the geek who thinks in terms of the billable hour - and the salary of an IT Pro - wastes his time nursing a P2P download.
It's exceedingly clear that people want a computer which: A) Works better (fast, responsive, stable). B) Is simpler (UI & maintenance).
I'm not so sure.
There have been many attempts to make a go of an alternative UI. Sugar, The Simputer, and so on.
But the traditional school desk has been around at least since the 1890s - and I have a strong suspicion your great great-grandad would have found the desktop UI easy to understand and easy to learn.
His dad's "secretary" was most likely a great walnut cabinet with dozens of pigeon-holes. Files and folders. Drag and drop.
With each new generation of hardware the geek seems determined to re-invent the web appliance.
Which no one wants and no one buys.
Not in the numbers which matter to WalMart.
The Kindle stores 1500 e-books for your off-line reading pleasure.
The Atom netbook running XP or Win 7 can play hundreds of MSDOS and Windows games - available as dirt-cheep downloads from places like Gog.com ["Good Old Games"]
In the U.S. it isn't the kid who is being sued. It is her parent or guardian.
The one the geek is always saying should bear the responsibility when things go wrong at home.
The big fines were intended to make professional copyright violations where some factory turns out hundreds or thousands of copies of fake product unprofitable. Using the same law to beat up some random person is disproportionate.
The civil judgment isn't a fine.
It's an award of damages for your unlicensed wholesale distribution. You aren't distributing a fake - you are distributing the real thing.
The production budget for a film like WALL-E is about $200 million dollars - double that for marketing and other costs.
The film represents four or five years of full or part-time work of four hundred highly skilled artists and engineers - and raked in hundreds of millions of export dollars.
Should it surprise the geek that the government doesn't want to see all that go away?
Should it surprise the geek that talent at this level is more likely to be invested in sequels to Toy Story and Ice Age than in the original - adult-oriented - sci-fi and fantasy films he claims he really wants to see?
Symantec might be good for the peons, but for experts the performance hit is too much. Expert users can find better, cheaper, and faster working solutions.
Given that the peons outnumber the experts by about a million to one, Symantec's future seems secure.
Did I mention that the geek sucks big-time when he tries to sell an idea or a product to the "huddled masses yearning to be free?"
Heck with digital distribution why even have ads on free stuff because the price of the device itself more than makes up for the minuscule price of transfer.
The vast majority of Kindle downloads are indeed priced at $9.99 or less (and a third of them are freebies) Amazon is subsidizing the cost of those $9.99 books, which means they're just barely profitable. Bernstein analysts Claudio estimate that Jeff Bezos and company record an operating profit of 61 cents on each $9.99 e-book they sell. But a $24.95 hardcover generates $4.25 in operating profit. That's a 7 to 1 ratio, and that can't continue, indefinitely.Like Your Kindle Books Cheap? Don't Get Too Used to It [June 19]
"Free Beer" is a time-honored way to build a market. But you can't freely distribute a third of your product - 100,000 titles - over the cell phone network and expect hardware sales to cover the bill.
He had a contract, and I suppose the legal details of this boil down to a matter of contract law (though I most certainly do have a problem with prison time rather than monetary damages for breach of contract).
This is a supremely stupid way to look at what happened.
This guy exposed "sensitive" materials to Chinese nationals. That puts them at hazard at well.
The minimal risk is interrogation, an attempt to extract whatever they have learned. The maximum risk is that they might be regarded as traitors themselves - if only for their silence.
The Chinese prof who exposes military secrets to an American is hung or shot to set the right example.
And I blame the government for foisting their homework onto a domain that largely considers secrecy either beneath consideration or outright contemptible.
"Only the Sith believes in absolutes."
Any academic will tell you that openness has its limits.
In the medical and social sciences, for example, there are many things you can't meaningfully study without promising anonymity to the people you need to talk to - - to work with.
Mozilla doesn't want to use the standard because it is the opposite: penniless and non-commercial. Its entire business plan is based on pushing users to do Google searches as that $50M in search fees is its only source of income.
"Penniless and non-commercial" aren't the words I would have chosen to describe an enterprise with $50-$80 million in revenues based on add-clicks.
What if someone uses this to write to an SSD card that they plug into some cheap portable device (a media player for example) that doesn't implement the "standard" properly
The OEM buys a license for FAT - capped at $250K, last I heard.
FAT is so common and so useful, that, from his point of view, it's money well spent.
If you are SONY or Panasonic and bought the license in 2003 your costs are a small fraction of a penny per unit. You don't need the hack.
I was just wondering how this system would work inside a nation or region that is actively trying to censor internet access or jam any "illegal networks"
Short answer? It doesn't.
This is an Internet Cafe in a Box. This is WiFi.
The base install costs 15 grand. The hardware has to clear customs.
You need an access point to the Internet.
There are antennas and solar panels, battery banks and all the rest that cannot be easily concealed. It will be trivially easy for the regime to find you.
You can encrypt the traffic - but you can't hide the transmission. Not without dramatically upping the stakes for everyone involved.
And this is the same government that people want making their personal health care decisions for them.
You will discover - at a certain age - if not before - that the government and the HMO are making the big decisions for you today.
The same government that issues Social Security checks to dead people, and sends 2 stimulus checks to others
Which - on balance - probably does less harm than the denial of a check to someone still living.
The US population over 65 is about 40 million.
If your employer is "doing business" on that scale - what is his error rate on accounts payable?
Every time I meet a worshipper of big government, I just want to slap them in their bitch mouth. Want to prevent another 9/11? Allow people with concealed-carry handgun permits to fly with their loaded handguns in the cabin.
You believe that big government will get everything wrong but the permit to carry a concealed weapon.
You are sandwiched into your seat - very awkwardly positioned - but still expect to pull off a quick one without killing the hostage.
Slashdot Mirror
They aren't an established company like GM or Ford, it makes sense for them to start out with high-end customized vehicles, grow large on that, and then slowly descend into the mass market as economies of scale start to kick in.
Henry Ford's production cars were mass market from Day 1. That distinguished them from almost everything else on the road.
Oldsmobile had pioneered the idea - but the Olds was an toy-like gas buggy:
Now when they go for a spin, you know,
She tries to learn the auto, so
He lets her steer, while he gets her ear
And whispers soft and low...
In My Merry Oldsmobile
Ford didn't wait for economies of scale to kick in. His engineers designed economies of scale into the car - into the production line.
Ford was relentless in his drive to eliminate skilled craft work. His four cylinder engine was cast as a single block - a first, I believe.
The Ford Model A and Model T were tough and versatile - mass market sales meant that Ford had real money to spend on R&D.
But Ford did enter the business as a young man. He was very slow in adopting later innovations like the electric starter.
The emphasis on color, style and comfort that marked the entry of the Chevy.
YouTube. It is the model for the future and the model that is being embraced by young people.
For as long as Google is prepared to foot the bill.
But you don't have to produce for the twenty-something market.
The geek always talks about "obsolete business models." He never considers the possibility that marketing to the geek is the obsolete business model.
This new golden age of theatrical animation plays well to audiences of every age. It plays particularly well to the audience that will buy the DVD and Blu-Ray disk.
The three disk set from Amazon that includes a digital download copy and sells for $25. Theoretically at least, that is 150+ GB of content or more than half of your neighbor's monthly download cap.
I'd have a huge garage sale, transfer all my money off shore, then relocate to a country that isn't extradition-friendly to the USA, but still has a nice lifestyle.
Because you were too cheap to rent your videos from Netflix?
I have wondered now and again why the geek who thinks in terms of the billable hour - and the salary of an IT Pro - wastes his time nursing a P2P download.
The country that is hostile to extradition may also be hostile to transfer. French kidnapper to serve sentence in Mexico
Lifestyles change. Regimes change. 1940 was not a good year to be an expatriate in Paris.
It's exceedingly clear that people want a computer which:
A) Works better (fast, responsive, stable).
B) Is simpler (UI & maintenance).
I'm not so sure.
There have been many attempts to make a go of an alternative UI. Sugar, The Simputer, and so on.
But the traditional school desk has been around at least since the 1890s - and I have a strong suspicion your great great-grandad would have found the desktop UI easy to understand and easy to learn.
His dad's "secretary" was most likely a great walnut cabinet with dozens of pigeon-holes. Files and folders. Drag and drop.
Making an example of one particular offender isn't the way the law is supposed to work.
It's the way the law always works.
The lesson never sinks in the first tine around.
The appellate court can reduce the award without ever reaching the constitutional issues that seem so enticing to the geek.
That ends the case and leaves Thomas up the creek without a paddle.
There is nothing more dangerous to a defendant than the lawyer who wants to make law.
With each new generation of hardware the geek seems determined to re-invent the web appliance.
Which no one wants and no one buys.
Not in the numbers which matter to WalMart.
The Kindle stores 1500 e-books for your off-line reading pleasure.
The Atom netbook running XP or Win 7 can play hundreds of MSDOS and Windows games - available as dirt-cheep downloads from places like Gog.com ["Good Old Games"]
And when did deterrents ever stop murders or kids making copies of songs for their friends?
Murder rates in countries with a tradition of strong and effective law enforcement tend to be quite low. List of countries by intentional homicide rate
The extortion kidnapping as an organized criminal enterprise was effectively extinguished in the U.S. in the nineteen thirties.
In Mexico it dominates the news. Mexico refuses to send French kidnap convict home [June 22]
In the U.S. it isn't the kid who is being sued. It is her parent or guardian.
The one the geek is always saying should bear the responsibility when things go wrong at home.
The big fines were intended to make professional copyright violations where some factory turns out hundreds or thousands of copies of fake product unprofitable. Using the same law to beat up some random person is disproportionate.
The civil judgment isn't a fine.
It's an award of damages for your unlicensed wholesale distribution. You aren't distributing a fake - you are distributing the real thing.
The production budget for a film like WALL-E is about $200 million dollars - double that for marketing and other costs.
The film represents four or five years of full or part-time work of four hundred highly skilled artists and engineers - and raked in hundreds of millions of export dollars.
Should it surprise the geek that the government doesn't want to see all that go away?
Should it surprise the geek that talent at this level is more likely to be invested in sequels to Toy Story and Ice Age than in the original - adult-oriented - sci-fi and fantasy films he claims he really wants to see?
And you just hit right on the head the biggest security measure you can do-get them off IE!
What - precisely - are the problems you see with IE 8?
Firefox has not been proven immune to attack. Security Advisories for Firefox 3.0
Is the technology of the browser still the most significant line of attack?
Does IE 8 Equal Safer Surfing?
Symantec might be good for the peons, but for experts the performance hit is too much. Expert users can find better, cheaper, and faster working solutions.
Given that the peons outnumber the experts by about a million to one, Symantec's future seems secure.
Did I mention that the geek sucks big-time when he tries to sell an idea or a product to the "huddled masses yearning to be free?"
Why should I buy something that locks me down in my own system. It's safe alright, but so is pulling the plug on the internet.
Because you are not an over-confident jerk - the geek who never quite got around to installing the Cornflicker patch?
The geek centers his life around his computer.
To everyone else, it's just another household appliance - and automated security and maintenance tools make perfectly good sense.
(find yourself a Way-Back Machine if you aren't familiar with those games).
You'll find that Oregon Trail remains a steady seller on Amazon.com - and that older versions are easy to find through sites like The Underdogs.
SCOTUS ruled that what you throw out is public property...
When and in what context? The betting here is that the property on question was retrieved from a trash can and introduced as evidence of a crime.
The gun you tossed in the dumpster.
Does your GPL'd project become public domain if someone reconstructs the code from the shards of paper that you ran through the shredder?
That I doubt very much.
What do you expect, if you look up an article on a martial arts weapon, if teenagers/kids/TMNT fans have the ability to edit it?
But why should they have the ability to edit it?
The martial arts have deep historical and cultural roots. The weapon was often the signature work of a master craftsman.
But what stops the police themselves editing Wikipedia, and then citing it back in court?
What stops the anyone from editing the Wikipedia and making use of it in court?
Heck with digital distribution why even have ads on free stuff because the price of the device itself more than makes up for the minuscule price of transfer.
The Kindle has sold about 800,000 units. Analyst: Kindle to reach 10 percent of Amazon's customer base [June 30]
The vast majority of Kindle downloads are indeed priced at $9.99 or less (and a third of them are freebies)
Amazon is subsidizing the cost of those $9.99 books, which means they're just barely profitable.
Bernstein analysts Claudio estimate that Jeff Bezos and company record an operating profit of 61 cents on each $9.99 e-book they sell. But a $24.95 hardcover generates $4.25 in operating profit. That's a 7 to 1 ratio, and that can't continue, indefinitely. Like Your Kindle Books Cheap? Don't Get Too Used to It [June 19]
"Free Beer" is a time-honored way to build a market. But you can't freely distribute a third of your product - 100,000 titles - over the cell phone network and expect hardware sales to cover the bill.
There is virtually nothing wrong with our copyright law... that our founding fathers wrote for us
The geek has no sense of history.
When English authors could be easily and safely pirated there was little chance for an American to make it into print.
Writers at Emerson's level had to beg friends for the money to self-publish.
That's possible for the social and economic elite - an Adams or a Parkman - but much harder for the middle or lower class.
Here is a simple test: "I have a mule, her name is Sal. Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal."
Folk song or the New York stage? 1830 or 1905?
Now try the same with a fragment of any old American song or story you seem to remember.
I'm betting you will be wrong about the date and wrong about its origins.
He had a contract, and I suppose the legal details of this boil down to a matter of contract law (though I most certainly do have a problem with prison time rather than monetary damages for breach of contract).
This is a supremely stupid way to look at what happened.
This guy exposed "sensitive" materials to Chinese nationals. That puts them at hazard at well.
The minimal risk is interrogation, an attempt to extract whatever they have learned. The maximum risk is that they might be regarded as traitors themselves - if only for their silence.
The Chinese prof who exposes military secrets to an American is hung or shot to set the right example.
And I blame the government for foisting their homework onto a domain that largely considers secrecy either beneath consideration or outright contemptible.
"Only the Sith believes in absolutes."
Any academic will tell you that openness has its limits.
In the medical and social sciences, for example, there are many things you can't meaningfully study without promising anonymity to the people you need to talk to - - to work with.
It's not just easier, it takes far less time, too.
This matters only to the tiny fraction of users who do not buy the OEM system bundle.
There is a fundamental contraction between an "open" web and a "standards-based based" web.
The "open" web is Calvinball.
The are rules made up as you go along. It is a ragged and unruly and fast-paced game - and as shamelessly profit-oriented as a thieves bazaar.
The standards-based web is a committee product. Riven by corporate, nationalist, technological, and ideological rivalries.
It tries to please everyone. But the dominant players are always visible in the background. Mostly it ratifies decisions already in place.
The committee takes the politically correct local out of Hampstead. The entrepreneur the hyper-sonic out of L.A.
The geek gets his HTML 5 video tag. But Microsoft and Adobe remain free to take Flash and Silverlight wherever they want to go.
Wow.. just Wow. What the fuck has happened to the US? What happened to free speech?
Nothing.
Free speech in American law is rooted in a tradition of unconstrained political debate without fear of government interference.
That is why Norman Rockwell in his "Four Freedoms" series chose the New England town meeting as his model. Freedom of Speech [1943]
The notion that all speech is protected speech has never taken hold.
"Contemporary community standards" is shorthand for saying that society as a whole has the right and the power to set limits.
To decide what it chooses to be and where it chooses to go.
Mozilla doesn't want to use the standard because it is the opposite: penniless and non-commercial. Its entire business plan is based on pushing users to do Google searches as that $50M in search fees is its only source of income.
"Penniless and non-commercial" aren't the words I would have chosen to describe an enterprise with $50-$80 million in revenues based on add-clicks.
What if someone uses this to write to an SSD card that they plug into some cheap portable device (a media player for example) that doesn't implement the "standard" properly
The OEM buys a license for FAT - capped at $250K, last I heard.
FAT is so common and so useful, that, from his point of view, it's money well spent.
If you are SONY or Panasonic and bought the license in 2003 your costs are a small fraction of a penny per unit. You don't need the hack.
interoperability is not trivial.
I was just wondering how this system would work inside a nation or region that is actively trying to censor internet access or jam any "illegal networks"
Short answer? It doesn't.
This is an Internet Cafe in a Box. This is WiFi.
The base install costs 15 grand. The hardware has to clear customs.
You need an access point to the Internet.
There are antennas and solar panels, battery banks and all the rest that cannot be easily concealed. It will be trivially easy for the regime to find you.
You can encrypt the traffic - but you can't hide the transmission. Not without dramatically upping the stakes for everyone involved.
And this is the same government that people want making their personal health care decisions for them.
You will discover - at a certain age - if not before - that the government and the HMO are making the big decisions for you today.
The same government that issues Social Security checks to dead people, and sends 2 stimulus checks to others
Which - on balance - probably does less harm than the denial of a check to someone still living.
The US population over 65 is about 40 million.
If your employer is "doing business" on that scale - what is his error rate on accounts payable?
Every time I meet a worshipper of big government, I just want to slap them in their bitch mouth. Want to prevent another 9/11? Allow people with concealed-carry handgun permits to fly with their loaded handguns in the cabin.
You believe that big government will get everything wrong but the permit to carry a concealed weapon.
You are sandwiched into your seat - very awkwardly positioned - but still expect to pull off a quick one without killing the hostage.