One of the key points of FOSS from what I remember is that the users ARE the developers, that's incentive enough for them not to produce crap.
That is incentive enough to produce something that doesn't look like complete crap to your fellow geeks. It doesn't mean that you can deliver a damn thing that is usable by anyone else.
Nintendo reportedly has optimized production costs to obtain a significant profit margin with each Wii unit sold.
That's true.
But you are betting on "old tech" and the budget price.
That you won't be caught one, two, or three generations behind your competitors somewhere down the road.
It has happened before in an industry that is notoriously cyclical. You need to be there with the NES when the Atari 2600 is retired to the bedroom closet.
Novelties like the Wii controller and the Wii-Fit board do not remain novelties forever,
Walt Disney didn't have 20 competitors who were arguably as good and as successful as he was.
MGM had Hanna and Barbera, Tex Avery. Warner, Chuck Jones and the other denizens of Termite Terrace. Paramount, Max Fleischer.
The difference is that Disney was willing to take animation into feature production. He was willing to invest in the talent, training and technology that would make that possible.
How will those who are doctors, law enforcement officials and such who are on call
The doctors I know choose to keep some semblance of a private life. They are professionals who make arrangements with other professionals to cover for them when necessary.
James Patterson - who made the cash register the iconic image of american business - had one one unbreakable rule: When an employee began to look indispensable he was as good as dead.
A policy at whatever place cannot override the law.
What law?
It amazes me - or at least it should amaze me - that a geek thinks he has the god-given right to intrude on a cell-free zone designed to encourage a parent to spend four uninterupted hours bonding with his kids.
It gives a whole new meaning to "separation anxiety."
And commercial copying should simply be taxed and the revenues handed to the creator of the copied work (to the extent with which such creative works need to be funded and monetized beyond other incentives). The whole monopoly aspect is what prevents and hampers the creation of wealth and flow of information. It needs to go.
The geek is libertarian only when it suits his convenience.
Taxation on distribution is the simplest way to control content and production.
The market doesn't set the price, the tax code sets the price.
The monopoly passes to the state and what the state doesn't want to see on the shelves doesn't go on the shelves - because no one can afford to buy it.
Mixed economies like those of the United States have been remarkably successful in generating wealth and and encouraging the free flow of information.
In ten years, J.K. Rowling moved from welfare to being richer than the Queen of England. That didn't stop other writers from claiming a significant share of the juvenile market.
The Harry Potter films became a training ground for a generation of young actors and a world showcase for veterans of the London film and stage.
Harry Potter is uniquely British - like The Avengers or James Bond - and its value to the UK as a cultural export can't be measured simply in pounds or dollars.
Although not meeting the strict legal definition as such, search engine providers like Google could conceivably angle for the protections afforded common carriers.
To simplify things drastically, a common carrier receives a measure of immunity from ordinary civil and criminal actions in exchange for the public services it provides.
The price is regulation. The price is cooperation with the government. You play by the rules or you lose your protection.
I am a foreigner, how does that compare to, for example, an homicide crime?
Under the American federal system, prosecution for murder is almost always a state responsibility.
Lethal injection as a punishment for murder is a very real possibility in states like Texas.
But committing any felony which will bring you into a federal court is perhaps the worst mistake you can make.
The most familiar example would be a crime committed in the capital district of Washington.
The case load is infinitely lighter than in the state courts and there is little incentive for the prosecution to settle for a guilty plea to a lesser charge.
You are unlikely to see an early release.
Federal prosecution for economic crimes has strong historical and constitutional roots.
Defense of the currency, regulation of interstate commerce.
Any crime that has an interstate dimension has always been very difficult to prosecute on a local level.
15% should be considered a very poor showing at this point, and it may never get much higher for Vista
All the same, the trend line for Vista is the only one that is visibly upward.
That doesn't say much for the vitality of the competition - even when it comes from Apple.
"Force feeding" aren't usually the words used to describe a vendor's relationship with Walmart.
It was an eye-opener to see 64 bit Vista Premium SP1 on a mass market laptop. Not to mention the 4 GB of RAM. The Intel version with Blu-Ray and NVIDIA DX10 graphics looks damn good for mobile video and gaming.
And we wonder why we have so many people in prison...
In the American system almost all violent offenders are prosecuted at the state level. The federal system has more than enough room for the Enron exec who thinks that economic and property crimes harm no one.
In other societies the white-collar criminal has been known to face the hangman's noose or the firing squad. An extreme remedy, perhaps. But it does tend to very efficiently strip away the technocrat's assumption that his brains and his skills make him answerable to no one.
Not quite sure how this ended as a posting from an AC.
Short and sweet:
Criminal misdemeanors have been part of american copyright law since 1897. The reach of the criminal law was extended and harsher penalties made available as early as 1909. In 1982 first-time offenders could be convicted on a felony charge.
As for the NET act of 1997:
The ease of infringement on the Internet was the primary reason for criminalizing noncommercial infringement as well as recognition of other motivations a nonprofit defendant might have such as anti-copyright or anti-corporate sentiment, trying to make a name in the Internet world and wanting to be a cyber renegade.Criminal Copyright Infringement
Steve Ballmer is in no way disappointed with Windows Vista. It is selling "incredibly well. Vista sells on almost 100 per cent of all the new consumer PCs around the world," He added that the operating system was also selling on, "45 percent of all of new business PCs". Which is enlightening, since business users are about the only buyers of new PCs that get a choice.
There are choices in the consumer market.
You can choose a Mac. You can chose OEM Linux or OEM XP.
[No one wants to build from a kit of parts. Which is why the Geek looks like a space alien when he talks about unbundling the OS from the hardware.]
But the reality - once you get past the Geek - is that these aren't the choices people are making. Top Operating System Share Trend
It doesn't matter which stats you quote. The Mac continues to hold the profitable niche market it claimed about twenty-five years ago.
Linux brings up the rear, with a market share in the single digiit and a trend line as flat as the Kansas praries.
There is no mystery here.
Walmart will sell you the gOS laptop.
The GBook is a great beginner's laptop... This is a Linux based PC and will not perform completely like a Windows based machine. It can perform basic activities such as E-mail, Web Browsing, Music and Pictures.
Damning with faint praise and securely anchoring Linux's reputation in the home market as a bottom-feeder.
Walmart will also sell you an HP Pavilion laptop with 64 bit Vista Premium SP1, NVIDIA DX9 graphics, a dual core AMD Turion CPU and 4 GB RAM for $1000.
Where in the constitution is the right to file share? The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The constitution explicitly granted Congress the right to issue patents and copyrights.
The rigorous "strict constructionist" - if there ever was such a beast - would argue that the rights retained by the people were the rights they held before 1789.
Interference with rights in real and intangible property met with a mighty cold reception in those days. It was what distinguished you from a slave, a tenant or a bonded laborer.
The Geek remembers Jefferson. He forgets Hamilton.
He forgets as well the Civil War Amendments and those which came after. Consider them a gloss on the then still resonant Biblical notion that every man was entitled to the fruits of his own labor.
Manufacturers of small cheap trinkets had better be worried because their time is next.
It is the geek who needs to worry when the designer and engineer is driven out of business by the unlicensed replicator.
He can't sell service because his product is disposable.
He can't recruit talent outside his own craft because he has nothing to offer as payment in return.
He can't live on the proceeds of a live performance. The sale of tee shirts and coffee mugs - the little trinkets his fellow geeks have made so easy to pirate.
Power goes out. Landlines still work. Weather gets crappy. Landlines still work. Not much that can fail on the user's end.
In the northeast, going wireless is still rare.
There are other numbers in the survey worth looking at:
The prevalence of binge drinking among wireless-only adults (37.3%) was twice as high as the prevalence among adults living in landline households (17.7%)
Wireless-only adults were more likely to report that their health status was excellent or very good, and they were more likely to engage in regular leisure-time physical activity.
The percentage without health insurance coverage (28.7%) was twice as high as the percentage among adults living in landline households (13.7%)
Wireless-only adults were more likely to have experienced financial barriers to obtaining needed health care, and they were less likely to have a usual place to go for medical care. Wireless-only adults were also less likely to have received an influenza vaccination during the previous year.
The wireless population is young but doesn't look like the picture of health it claims to be.
As age increased, the percentage of adults living in households with only wireless telephones decreased: 15.5% for adults aged 30-44 years; 8.0% for adults aged 45-64 years; and 2.2% for adults aged 65 years and over
This is a much poorer and less stable a population than I expected. It rents but does not own. It has roommates not families. It is more inner-city than suburban or rural.
WildBlue is hardly a solution. 1.2 second ping times and low usage quotas...make it a non-starter. Wireless to a neighbor's should be really easy with a pair or directional antennas- you could even throw a parabolic behind a rubber ducky and hit 300 meters at 11mbit- I've done it over 2km at 100mw tx power.
I know that for the geek satellite broadband is the last resort. But I can't be there to build and maintain a wireless solution for my father. To negotiate a cooperative solution with his neighbors.
he got sick of it and relies on Hughes satellite Internet, at $60/month, but he still has to be connected to phone line to upload to the Internet
WildBlue is two way. $250 installed. {To June 30th]
No trenches. No cables. No conduits.
No expensive legal muck-ups over easements and rights-of-way. I'm betting at some point there will be a conflict.
When it comes time to lay new water and sewers lines.
Widen the shoulder and dig a new drainage ditch for the county road.
3b: If you've chosen to run the connection to your neighbhour's home, ensure that you don't piss him/her off. They are now your cable internet provider.
Don't even think about it.
There are ISPs which are agreeable to this sort of thing.
But - sadly - the trencher that accidentally snags your line will probably belong to someone else. 500 to 1000 meters of undocumented fiber is going to look a lot like theft of services.
64 Bit Vista SP1 Premium
AMD 64 bit Dual Core Turion CPU
NVIDA GeForce Go DX9 Graphics
17" wide-screen display 4 GB RAM
250 GB HDD
LightScribe DVD Burner [burn your own labels]
Integrated WiFi, Webcam, Etc., Etc.
For $400 more you get the Intel Dual Core CPU, NViDIA 8600M 512 MB DX10 graphics, a 320 GB HDD and a Blue Ray Player/DVD burner with your 64 bit OS and 4GB RAM. HP 17" Pavilion Laptop.
Oh, and did I forget to mention the bundled ATSC HDTV tuner card?
It's a wonder that the US Government just doesn't hire a few people to write some textbooks that they would use in their schools.
For gradeschool and even highschool, the material is simple enough that it wouldn't take that much to get the job done
Only a geek could be so naive - or forgetful:
Its founding fathers are dead, its disciples scattered, its millions long spent. Yet countless Americans still carry the revolutionary message of new math in their memories, if not always close to their hearts. Before the results could even be measured, new math became a near religion, complete with its own high priests and heresies.
Where did new math go? And what happened to all those schoolchildren ready to experience, as one writer called it, "the wonder of why"?Whatever Happened To New Math
The public school curricula is under perpetual assault from all sides.
No subject - and no method of teaching - is ever free of controversy. That is the reason why the third world education minister shies away from projects as ideologically freighted as the OLPC.
That is why your local school board doesn't want its choice of textbooks dictated by Washington.
Slashdot Mirror
That is incentive enough to produce something that doesn't look like complete crap to your fellow geeks. It doesn't mean that you can deliver a damn thing that is usable by anyone else.
This always sounds like a great comeback...
But if your boss is comfortable with where he is now it is probably because he is getting the support he needs and at a price he thinks is reasonable.
He is not seeing the kind of problems that would make rebuilding his business around a Red Hat solution worthwhile.
That's true.
But you are betting on "old tech" and the budget price.
That you won't be caught one, two, or three generations behind your competitors somewhere down the road.
It has happened before in an industry that is notoriously cyclical. You need to be there with the NES when the Atari 2600 is retired to the bedroom closet.
Novelties like the Wii controller and the Wii-Fit board do not remain novelties forever,
MGM had Hanna and Barbera, Tex Avery. Warner, Chuck Jones and the other denizens of Termite Terrace. Paramount, Max Fleischer.
The difference is that Disney was willing to take animation into feature production. He was willing to invest in the talent, training and technology that would make that possible.
the wolf brings to the table his warrior's instincts, his brains and his training. the sheep remains a sheep no matter how well armed.
The doctors I know choose to keep some semblance of a private life. They are professionals who make arrangements with other professionals to cover for them when necessary.
James Patterson - who made the cash register the iconic image of american business - had one one unbreakable rule: When an employee began to look indispensable he was as good as dead.
What law?
It amazes me - or at least it should amaze me - that a geek thinks he has the god-given right to intrude on a cell-free zone designed to encourage a parent to spend four uninterupted hours bonding with his kids.
It gives a whole new meaning to "separation anxiety."
The geek is libertarian only when it suits his convenience.
Taxation on distribution is the simplest way to control content and production.
The market doesn't set the price, the tax code sets the price.
The monopoly passes to the state and what the state doesn't want to see on the shelves doesn't go on the shelves - because no one can afford to buy it.
Mixed economies like those of the United States have been remarkably successful in generating wealth and and encouraging the free flow of information.
In ten years, J.K. Rowling moved from welfare to being richer than the Queen of England. That didn't stop other writers from claiming a significant share of the juvenile market.
The Harry Potter films became a training ground for a generation of young actors and a world showcase for veterans of the London film and stage.
Harry Potter is uniquely British - like The Avengers or James Bond - and its value to the UK as a cultural export can't be measured simply in pounds or dollars.
To simplify things drastically, a common carrier receives a measure of immunity from ordinary civil and criminal actions in exchange for the public services it provides.
The price is regulation. The price is cooperation with the government. You play by the rules or you lose your protection.
Under the American federal system, prosecution for murder is almost always a state responsibility.
Lethal injection as a punishment for murder is a very real possibility in states like Texas.
But committing any felony which will bring you into a federal court is perhaps the worst mistake you can make.
The most familiar example would be a crime committed in the capital district of Washington.
The case load is infinitely lighter than in the state courts and there is little incentive for the prosecution to settle for a guilty plea to a lesser charge.
You are unlikely to see an early release.
Federal prosecution for economic crimes has strong historical and constitutional roots.
Defense of the currency, regulation of interstate commerce.
Any crime that has an interstate dimension has always been very difficult to prosecute on a local level.
All the same, the trend line for Vista is the only one that is visibly upward.
That doesn't say much for the vitality of the competition - even when it comes from Apple.
"Force feeding" aren't usually the words used to describe a vendor's relationship with Walmart.
It was an eye-opener to see 64 bit Vista Premium SP1 on a mass market laptop. Not to mention the 4 GB of RAM. The Intel version with Blu-Ray and NVIDIA DX10 graphics looks damn good for mobile video and gaming.
In the American system almost all violent offenders are prosecuted at the state level. The federal system has more than enough room for the Enron exec who thinks that economic and property crimes harm no one.
In other societies the white-collar criminal has been known to face the hangman's noose or the firing squad.
An extreme remedy, perhaps. But it does tend to very efficiently strip away the technocrat's assumption that his brains and his skills make him answerable to no one.
Short and sweet:
Criminal misdemeanors have been part of american copyright law since 1897.
The reach of the criminal law was extended and harsher penalties made available as early as 1909.
In 1982 first-time offenders could be convicted on a felony charge.
As for the NET act of 1997:
The ease of infringement on the Internet was the primary reason for criminalizing noncommercial infringement as well as recognition of other motivations a nonprofit defendant might have such as anti-copyright or anti-corporate sentiment, trying to make a name in the Internet world and wanting to be a cyber renegade. Criminal Copyright Infringement
You won't be jetting off to Europe without a passport. You won't be getting a passport while you are on probation. Urgent Passport Services FAQ
But your download from the P2P nets isn't a trade with the producer. Nor have you bargained for the rights to its redistribution.
That would be the Geek.
When his technical jargon becomes popular usage the Geek loses control of his language and his identity.
There the PC and the Mac.
There is the Geek installing a Linux distro on his bare-bones system.
No one quite seems to know where they fit in.
There are choices in the consumer market.
You can choose a Mac. You can chose OEM Linux or OEM XP.
[No one wants to build from a kit of parts. Which is why the Geek looks like a space alien when he talks about unbundling the OS from the hardware.]
But the reality - once you get past the Geek - is that these aren't the choices people are making. Top Operating System Share Trend
It doesn't matter which stats you quote. The Mac continues to hold the profitable niche market it claimed about twenty-five years ago.
Linux brings up the rear, with a market share in the single digiit and a trend line as flat as the Kansas praries.
There is no mystery here.
Walmart will sell you the gOS laptop.
The GBook is a great beginner's laptop... This is a Linux based PC and will not perform completely like a Windows based machine. It can perform basic activities such as E-mail, Web Browsing, Music and Pictures.
Damning with faint praise and securely anchoring Linux's reputation in the home market as a bottom-feeder.
Walmart will also sell you an HP Pavilion laptop with 64 bit Vista Premium SP1, NVIDIA DX9 graphics, a dual core AMD Turion CPU and 4 GB RAM for $1000.
For the Intel Core 2 Duo with Blu-Ray drive, 64 bit Vista Premium SP1, HDTV tuner card and NViDIA 512 MB 8600 M GS DX10 graphics add $400.
But the work of another's mind and hand is yours for the taking?
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The constitution explicitly granted Congress the right to issue patents and copyrights.
The rigorous "strict constructionist" - if there ever was such a beast - would argue that the rights retained by the people were the rights they held before 1789.
Interference with rights in real and intangible property met with a mighty cold reception in those days. It was what distinguished you from a slave, a tenant or a bonded laborer.
The Geek remembers Jefferson. He forgets Hamilton.
He forgets as well the Civil War Amendments and those which came after. Consider them a gloss on the then still resonant Biblical notion that every man was entitled to the fruits of his own labor.
It is the geek who needs to worry when the designer and engineer is driven out of business by the unlicensed replicator.
He can't sell service because his product is disposable.
He can't recruit talent outside his own craft because he has nothing to offer as payment in return.
He can't live on the proceeds of a live performance. The sale of tee shirts and coffee mugs - the little trinkets his fellow geeks have made so easy to pirate.
In the northeast, going wireless is still rare.
There are other numbers in the survey worth looking at:
The prevalence of binge drinking among wireless-only adults (37.3%) was twice as high as the prevalence among adults living in landline households (17.7%)
Wireless-only adults were more likely to report that their health status was excellent or very good, and they were more likely to engage in regular leisure-time physical activity.
The percentage without health insurance coverage (28.7%) was twice as high as the percentage among adults living in landline households (13.7%)
Wireless-only adults were more likely to have experienced financial barriers to obtaining needed health care, and they were less likely to have a usual place to go for medical care. Wireless-only adults were also less likely to have received an influenza vaccination during the previous year.
Wireless-only adults (47.6%) were more likely than adults living in landline households (34.7%) to have ever been tested for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Selected Health Measures by Household Telephone Status:
There are obvious contradictions here.
The wireless population is young but doesn't look like the picture of health it claims to be.
As age increased, the percentage of adults living in households with only wireless telephones decreased: 15.5% for adults aged 30-44 years; 8.0% for adults aged 45-64 years; and 2.2% for adults aged 65 years and over
This is a much poorer and less stable a population than I expected. It rents but does not own. It has roommates not families. It is more inner-city than suburban or rural.
I know that for the geek satellite broadband is the last resort. But I can't be there to build and maintain a wireless solution for my father. To negotiate a cooperative solution with his neighbors.
WildBlue is two way. $250 installed. {To June 30th]
No trenches. No cables. No conduits.
No expensive legal muck-ups over easements and rights-of-way. I'm betting at some point there will be a conflict.
When it comes time to lay new water and sewers lines.
Widen the shoulder and dig a new drainage ditch for the county road.
3b: If you've chosen to run the connection to your neighbhour's home, ensure that you don't piss him/her off. They are now your cable internet provider.
Don't even think about it.
There are ISPs which are agreeable to this sort of thing.
But - sadly - the trencher that accidentally snags your line will probably belong to someone else. 500 to 1000 meters of undocumented fiber is going to look a lot like theft of services.
So you are saying it took ten years for the price of the 5 MB HDD to drop to $2000. Which is far from mass market pricing in 1980.
Fast forward to 2001-2002:
Midline is a 2 GHz P4 desktop with 512 MB MB of RAM, a 100 MB HDD and NVIDIA 4600 graphics. $1200 or thereabouts.
In 2008 these are specs of a $1000 HP laptop from Walmart.com
64 Bit Vista SP1 Premium
AMD 64 bit Dual Core Turion CPU
NVIDA GeForce Go DX9 Graphics
17" wide-screen display
4 GB RAM
250 GB HDD
LightScribe DVD Burner [burn your own labels]
Integrated WiFi, Webcam, Etc., Etc.
For $400 more you get the Intel Dual Core CPU, NViDIA 8600M 512 MB DX10 graphics, a 320 GB HDD and a Blue Ray Player/DVD burner with your 64 bit OS and 4GB RAM. HP 17" Pavilion Laptop.
Oh, and did I forget to mention the bundled ATSC HDTV tuner card?
For gradeschool and even highschool, the material is simple enough that it wouldn't take that much to get the job done
Only a geek could be so naive - or forgetful:
Its founding fathers are dead, its disciples scattered, its millions long spent. Yet countless Americans still carry the revolutionary message of new math in their memories, if not always close to their hearts.
Before the results could even be measured, new math became a near religion, complete with its own high priests and heresies.
Where did new math go? And what happened to all those schoolchildren ready to experience, as one writer called it, "the wonder of why"? Whatever Happened To New Math
The public school curricula is under perpetual assault from all sides.
No subject - and no method of teaching - is ever free of controversy. That is the reason why the third world education minister shies away from projects as ideologically freighted as the OLPC.
That is why your local school board doesn't want its choice of textbooks dictated by Washington.