15 bucks may seem OK to you, that's your business, but you also brought it up in a commentary forum, so I will comment. From my perspective, taking a longer range view of technology and society and business, you are encouraging them to keep trying to get 10,000% (whatever, some huge amount way over real production and delivery costs) markup prices for digital copies of stuff. I think that's shortsighted. I guess you make fair pay, but what about the rest of the planet for whom 15 bucks is a very considerable sum? Tough crap for those people?
You're force feeding the digital replicator tech monopolist trolls WAY too much there, bragging about it, and helping screw it up for the rest of the planet in the future by keeping prices just way way too high for these digital products. forced artificial scarcity. Just seems dumb to me to play make believe that some digital copy costs just so much to make and deliver, when it doesn't, it is nothing like a dead trees copy there, not even close.. Even ten bucks for some digital copy of a random book is way too expensive, it's ridiculous. Hey, why not brag about paying 200 grand for a toyota corolla? I'm sure there is some dealer out there would gladly markup to that level and take that much for one. Or maybe you can get one of those 999$ iPod apps that just says "I'm just so rich I can afford this app that does nothing but show how much it cost me, neener neener"? I mean, do you really want to encourage this price level for a few cents worth of electron transfer, and make it even worse? You said this was an academic question, so there it is in more detail, exactly why is this supposed to be a good deal for society in general terms, paying such a huge markup? How about the alternative, much cheaper per-copy costs, and have a MUCH larger sales potential then? How about that as a more fair alternative?
I say people should do this, stop paying that much for digital copies of stuff, and then however they want to go about it, email or phone calls or whatever, tell those content sellers they would be perfectly willing to buy product x, y or z, but only at a much fairer price level, a price level that reflects TRUE digital replicator costs to make and deliver new copies, for anything really, books, music, movies, software..whatever. If it can be made into a digital copy and transferred that way, it should be really cheap now, because that's the reality of the tech/engineering level we are at now.
I just hate large scale industry collusion to maintain artificial high prices in most anything, I don't care what the product is, tangible or intangible. It's even worse when people encourage that behavior and business practice by paying those bloated prices.
I thoroughly like the idea of ebooks and whatever, so that people all over the planet can get access to that, it is just ridiculous to think those sort of prices are fair or even a long range smart business decision.
Huge volume sales and really cheap prices are where it is at long range I think, at least it certainly should be. Charging 15 bucks for an ebook just knocks out about 3/4ths of the humans on the planet now from considering purchase, and even in the remaining 1/4 it is still serious price gouging.
I'm really not trying to be flambeau-bate here, just I seem by nature to take a longer range view of things, that's just how I look at stuff, always have. Digital copy prices today are a bad precedent now, and it needs to change.
How do the manufacturers load the OS in the first place? Seems like that is where to start looking, even to the point of tracking down the "real" manufacturer and asking them directly through a phone call or email. Maybe they need a hardhack to the mobo or something, soldered on flash, or is the OS on a ROM chip, or what? I just don't know. I notice it has USB as well, perhaps there, go from an external flash drive or optical drive? I don't know any answers there on running some flavor of linux on them, just replying that there are, in fact, ARM based cheapish netbooks out there at retail, they aren't all unobtanium yet as was suggested. Cherrypal sells some as well.
Right before I saw that thing in the store I had just gotten a new phone, so that blew my toy budget (which is a low amount of cash at any given time), else I would have gotten one for funzies.
Ha, I am a strict Constitutionalist, a practical centrist, with the emphasis being the soverign individual first, then some powers to the states, then even less to the central government. the original idea.
I *wish* it was attempted, because I think it could actually work..
When it comes to corporations I just don't like crooks thieves and liars, nor vampire corporations that can get away with anything and can't be killed, just because of "making money" as their one and only priority. There needs to be a "three strikes and you are out" for corporations same as it is for individuals. It should be a lot easier to get their charters revoked.
I think *voluntary* collectivism is an interesting idea to run companies fairly and ethically, and still make a buck, like the movements in Argentina today. I'm not real big on large scale centralized planning (left or right wing), but as a voluntary thing, sure. I like the idea of eliminating the typical "workers versus management versus shareholders" internal war which screws up corporations today, and makes them work inefficiently and keeps everyone mad at the other guy. I think that's a lame stupid model. I think the owners should be the workers should be the managers, and share in the profits equitably. This would help eliminate all those bogus decisions based on "short term profits" mentality.
It is a companies sole responsibility to make money for its shareholders.
Ya, and that sucks, too, and it should be changed back to more of the original US model, where there were more duties and a lot more oversight into their conduct. Originally, it was a lot harder to get to be a corporation, charters were for a limited time, then a review before a renew, and you had to be publicly responsible, they couldn't be used to influence public policy, and a lot of other restrictions. Just "making profits" wasn't the sole criteria then to get granted a corporate charter.
As it is today, it seems like they can do just about anything they want to do, and even if they run afoul of the last remaining checks and balances on their behavior, if they can meet the fine and pass the costs down to their next customers..that's it, they just keep on.
And that's the problem, it's way to easy to have corporations now, and way too hard to get rid of the ones who engage in chronic serial antisocial or outright illegal behavior. They can come to life, but you can't kill them. And even if they screw up so bad they manage to go bankrupt, if they are big enough, they get emergency bailed out. I mean, WTF..you can't get rid of bad businesses or bad business creeps anymore? This is touted as some economic or social "good", because it "enhances shareholder value" or something? This is our loftiest goal?
What you said is certainly true today, but it is the cause of a lot of problems...
A lot of modern corporations look more like toxic invasive species superweeds to me than anything else.
The global arms industry exists just as much because it is profitable, as it is being really necessary. It falls into the ludicrous unreal geez-loweez that's a lot of loot profits range. There's huge bucks/roubles/yen/renminbi/euros whatever in prepping for wars and fighting wars, any size.
It is not just any one nation's fault, in other words.
Since when didn't Japan take huge chunks of the US economy? When I first started to drive, it was really rare to see a japanese car, as in..nevah. Now? Who needed emergency bailouts again, to keep from going completely bankrupt? How about electronics? I remember when all the TVs,radios, HiFis, etc were predominantly US made, that's what you saw in the stores and in people's homes, with germany actually being second tier, then, Japanese electronics hit. Whammmo they hit. Now, how many US made TVs are there and so forth? Like zero? How about heavy equipment? We are the largest farm in this area, and just for tractors.lemme see here..we have one US made, john deere (and their smaller ones they sell are just rebadged yanmars AFAIK) *six* japanese (kubotas), three german or austrian (deutz and vetter) (that's just tractors, of course we have all sorts of other equipment, mixed as well) (and Indian mahindras are starting to sell pretty good around here now). How about motorcycles? Way back you saw some US and english bikes mostly, (harleys and triumphs mostly, with the odd bmw thrown in) Now? Rough guess, what I see is 7/8ths japanese bikes on the road, with china taking the dinky scooter market so far, but they will be expanding that. And so on
Ya, it changes around, the main point from a US perspective to keep focused on isn't so much where stuff is sourced *from*, it is where it *ain't sourced from*, which is more and more daily the USA being the "ain't". We continue to lose manufacturing all across the industrial spectrum, which is value-added wealth creation that increases the internal economy to a large degree. And hand in hand with losing manufacturing over the last four decades now, the US government and economic overlords (same dudes in the revolving door wall street/DC government axis) have had to result to accounting tricks and issuing ever more stupid compounded IOU paper to give the appearance of prosperity.
The number one US manufactured *thing* today is debt. Followed by advanced military weapons.....contemplate some outcomes there for awhile..
You can only do that "debt manufacturing" for so long before good money stops being thrown at bad money. Eventually, the planet is going to call the US on its debt and just stop doing that. Interesting times then...
This reserve currency deal, that came about from the Marshall Plan and the petrodollar phenomenon, has made accumulating all this debt possible, but it sure isn't going to last forever. You can't do this accumulate more debt than what you make on a smaller personal scale forever, as everyone knows, you'll go bankrupt and get bounced out on the street and your ride go away to the repo man, nor can you do it on a medium scale, nor even a huge large scale.
The timeline varies on your bankruptcy and crash and repo man showing up, but not that outcome.
Thanks for the hot intel! Hmmm..dang flyin saucer attack..grumble..buncha bug eyed freaks....w-a-l-l-l, I know what *my* last ditch militia duty is! Them **&&^sa*(*&&itches ain't tangled with this old hippy redneck geek..no sirree.../me heads to the gunstore to score a case of 12 gauge goose shot.....and digs old powerbook outta the closet and loads it up with winderz viruses..
Ubuntu/Canonical is a large enough company now that they could start selling integrated software/hardware platforms that "just work". Sort of like apple, but all open source as the main difference. They could make money that way. If a local mom and pop whitebox shop can put together systems and make money at it, Canonical could too. Perhaps they could focus on the ARM chip to do this, and start with good affordable netbooks and nettops, and work their way up from there. Heck, maybe jump into cellphones for that matter.
...if we had put both of them together..way in the middle of the night into their mission..when no big bosses were around..the intern techs could have had ROBOT FIGHTS ON MARS!..now, how cool is *that*? And even when they got busted for it, the news would have inspired another generation of young geeks 100 times more than now, leading to..one buhzillion dollars of new funding, thousands more young scientists, etc, just so maybe they could have a chance to goof off with the next generation of the most expensive toys evah. Another example? Nethack on early mainframes...young auto engineers ripping up the closed track in prototypes,,, stuff like that...golf on the moon, and dune buggy rides...if you look at our history, there has to be cool perks for real science and technology to go forward!
Russia's nuke research was greatly helped/jump started by industrial espionage during the WW2 lend-lease program, partly facilitated and financed by short term profits centered traders and compromised governmental functionaries inside the US and Canada. Nuke secrets and actual hardware, including uranium salts and more refined metals, were loaded on planes in the US and shipped there through Alaska into Siberia. They were able to bypass decades of research that way. After that, ya, good at it, but it was that jump start that kicked them into high gear.
Fast forward to today, and it is exactly what China has been doing now in a way for the last twenty years. Just the level of scientific and engineering help is much larger. They have been acquiring just mega loads of already developed tech to start with and work from, at firesale prices or free, heck, they get paid to just take it, that they can turn around and clone and refine and further develop, without doing much of the preliminary steps.
It has been a huge global market advantage for them, simply an enormous advantage, as is obvious looking at global finance today. The west has been giving them every possible industrial advantage, all so that the market traders and labor arbitragers can rake in huge short term profits. Of course China would take that deal, and has, free stuff, then work from there. They got bootstrapped a hundred years in technological development in 20.
China isn't the real problem with the decline of western economies, and it was predictable, and was. It has been the west's own business people in collaboration with some politicians basically selling them out and taking a fat skim in the middle. It's like those corporate raiders who do a hostile take over of some company, sell off all the juicy bits fast for huge short term profits, gut the companies, vote themselves a golden parachute then move on to their next victim/target. Except this has been on entire national scales. We let the looters..loot.
That's why so many of these western nations now have to bailout banks, watch their hard industries collapse, watch their trade deficits soar, watch their internal debt load soar, watch their unemployment levels soar, and resort to desperation governmental accounting tricks with their currencies, etc, to make it appear that things are better than they really are.
Just more cartel and collusion efforts to keep the prices of digitized bits extraordinarily higher than what a true market price would be, based on costs of making new copies. They have been so afraid to try a real market based approach, and make their money on migh higher sales, that they keep coming up with all this DRM nonsense and getting new laws and restrictions on the books, etc. This is not advancing society, it isn't anything for them to be proud of, and goes against every other major technical breakthrough humans have ever come up with. They are killing off replicator technology on purpose, throwing huge restrictions on it, and it has been a major blunder of a precedent.
*Eventually* there is going to be a credible lawsuit and court challenge that sorts out this mass collusion and multi cross cartel price fixing for products that have price X to produce in the first place, then all the official legal offerings/copies are are a hundred to a thousand times X at legal retail, when the real cost of a copy is a small fraction of a small fraction of that. Playing make believe that there is a natural scarcity of digital products, that they are the same as a tangible manufactured product.. is simply..well, it is silly, stupid, pretty nutso, short sighted, flies in the face of advancing the arts and sciences, flies in the face of having any government of all the people in the first place, etc. We are being held back by this terrible practice.
car related analogy,not exact but close: If the price of oil was 50 bucks a barrel to produce it, and cost for a gallon of fuel at all the "legal" pumps was 5,000 or 10,000 bucks, I think people would notice that someplace in there there was some serious shenanigans and price fixing and price gouging going on. With digital down loadable products, with the ability to make incredibly cheap "new copies" of said product, no matter what it is, it seems to still be unnoticed by any regulatory bodies as to what "fair and reasonable" might be.
And we have legal precedent to do this, well established, and I bet thoroughly enjoyed with no complaints whatsoever from the same exaqct people who want to maintain those ludicrous price gouging prices for digital products. We have municipal water supplies that are regulated so as to remain affordable, reasonable, and as fair as possible. Just take a wonder there if it was totally privatized and was sold at "what the market could bear" price, which phrase I *know* will be the first bitch about what I am writing about. Really, what do you imagine the price of water would get to then? How about centralized electricity delivery? You may have a few choices on that bill, but you are also having an overall reasonable cap on the prices set by your public utility commission, and the providers must go before them and make a fair case on any price increases they want. If it wasn't regulated thusly, they could wait for the biggest heat wave of the summer and up your price to 1,000% of what it was previously the day before. Take it or leave it Mr. sweaty guy, take it or leave it. Sure, you could do that... Or the coldest day of the winter and up your natgas delivery price 1000%. Now how about if the natgas guys, the electricity guys, the fuel oil guys, all of the above all set their prices at the same time up a thousand or ten thousand percent higher? That's the situation we have right now tith digital products, across the industry. Would people really go for that sort of thing with those other products? How about if all the major grocery stores just one day decide they were going to quintuple their prices on everything? Would the market bear that price? Well, of course, you could "choose" to just not eat that week, and "wait for the market to sort itself out better". Kinda hard when they are all doing the same exact thing too, though..that's why it is called a cartel, and why when stuff like this happens, we have congressional investigations and so on, because we are civilized, and decided a long time ago that business needed some regulati
Well. we will have to see, this is speculation after all. Freenet and sealand and tor and so forth type efforts..they could shut them down if they felt like it, at the major nodes. As it is now, I bet they leave them up just to monitor traffic. Heck, half of those entry and exit points are probably cops anyway...
Open wireless, make it a serious crime if someone does naughty things on your open wireless, people will start restricting them more and require verified logins. For example, my local library has wireless, but you must have a library card to access it, and you must show ID to get such a card. Businesses that currently run those things, like coffee shops and so on, will have their lawyers tell them to lock it down more. and most of them have security cams now, even if they don't require any ID to access, could be if later on they wanted to narrow it down, they could just correlate interesting traffic with the cam feed/storage, work from there.
In other words, it isn't as technically difficult as it seems, it is just in the past and even now they haven't really done it. That is what I think will change after ACTA is passed. They know or have a good idea what is what, look at that slashdot story now about shutting down people who got zombiefied (good idea there actually, at least slow them down and give them notice to get their computer dipped in disinfectant). Just about as much effort as it would take to notice who is doing what else they might want to look at or restrict. Deep packet and so on. Private VPNs..court order, one end or the other, or they could run a cutout and offer that service themselves, just for fishing expeditions. They already do that with drugs sales stings and prositution sales stings and official secrets stings., sop plenty of legal precedent there. "terrorism" "security" "economic protection against the evil haxorz" whatever, they will have some excuse or excuse.
All of that type stuff. You could easily see canonical and a lot of other linux distros not linking at all to things like DeCSS, or half the stuff that goes with mplayer, and mplayer itself have to go basically underground/dark net under a "making available" statute. Stuff like that.
I think for real world examples, in the face of opposition, perhaps look at how china keeps evolving their net access and content access restrictions, working hand in glove with the top networking manufacturers. Sure it can be circumvented, but it gets harder all the time for the people there to do so, and it will cross a point where joe or wong sixpack simply will not have any skills to defeat that, which joe or wong sixpack being 99.999% of the traffic.
The bottom line is *their* bottom line as regards how much tech and effort they will throw at this, and we don't know yet, because they are still working on that ACTA at the higherest international level. They have made no bones about enforcing "IP" in the strictest sense because that is what they want to use to replace manufacturing type jobs/serious income with in the west. This is potentially hugemongous gobs of money and interest now, so we have to extrpolate based on past similar interests how much effort and tech they will throw at this then. My guess is, "a lot". Not very scientific, but they will certainly be throwing a lot more than what they are doing now, else, what is the point of ACTA in the first place? They wouldn't even be fooling around with it.
So, we can agree to disagree, you think it won't be much different from today, I think it will shoot up and get a lot harder to be "casual" with IP issues, with a lot more busts, and a lot more media coverage and people getting scared when they start getting nasty gram warnings from their ISP. That isn't happening right now very much, but if and when, etc..
I think technological change is *way* more fast now than in the past, the fastest it has ever been. I'm not that old, but I remember when most people didn't have TVs yet, and a lot of people didn't even have landline phones, so that's old enough to have somewhat of a longer range historical perspective. Fast changes then, but twin turbo with the nitrous button now.
It used to be you could be a generalist, and keep up with things, then a specialist, now you have to be a sub-specialist inside of a specialty, just to maintain the pace.
Read every single eurekalert press release for a few weeks, all the disciplines there, just to get a small smattering of a handle on it, just an overview, a summary...that's some serious fast change. We are crossing from what was dang woo-woo not too long ago into serious practical science, and quickly.
We are going to hit this "singularity" thing they talk about a lot sooner than most folks realize...if we don't major screwup and destroy the planet and ourselves *right* before that threshold is crossed first. And that's a big "if". If you include our evolution socially/psychologically, which we must in looking at the whole "human" thing, the two paths are not even close in maintaining parity in the speed of evolutionary change. Tech is outstripping the other important bits, by a large factor, which means we could screw up pretty bad. And that's my sci fi prediction, complete with cliffhanger, for the sequel.
Yo man, don't shoot the messenger here. I am just reminding about this new ACTA. I am not disputing the present or the past, they are what they are, just talking about the near future. They are going to be serious about it once that passes. that's the whole idea, and they got the juice to do it. You may not recognize it as a big deal yet, shoot, hardly anyone does, but it is there and eventually will be put into force. DeCss and so on, is exactly what I have been saying, they *haven't* been serious about enforcement, nor much for downloading copyrighted content. It's been joke level enforcement so far. This previous **AA "enforcement", for example, is just them getting warmed up and developing their tech to pull this off better. They will keep changing it around until they get something that works on a mass scale. so far, when they have started sending out the threatening letters for getting people to be bounced from the net connection, that has been working better than threats of cash lawsuits. After that will come blacklists, and no more net connections for people anyplace. All of this is set to change fast once they have even more legal precedent that will be in the form of this international treaty/agreement. A lot of these repositories and so on with "infringing" warez to make your box functional with various media will find it hard to find anyplace that will host them outside of the control of the RBN. The wild wild west days of the net are rapidly closing, the suits are going to want their money and way more control of the net, or else.
Thanks, I hadn't seen that, just looked it up. And technically he is correct, one of his quotes in the article, it was his grandfather who helped arrange the looting of the west to advance China so rapidly. He calls it marxist thought and discipline though, but it still happened. The west big biz leaders offered everything at firesale prices, for a very large cut, short term megaprofits. The Chinese leaders took that deal, realizing that they could suck it up for just one generation, then advance a hundred years in twenty, then eventually be top dog on the planet. They would have been stupid to not take that sellout deal from our quislings (unfortunately for us).
Ya, we learned from our mistakes and don't still do the same thing, at least internally. We went through our civil war and internal genocide a long time ago. And at least we play act at having different political parties and the oppression isn't as clear cut in your face, they remain more subtle about it...and it just isn't to the same degree as the chinese communist party/PLA does it today. I mean, I got beefs about our own government, serious beefs, but I sure as heck wouldn't swap it for their government. Not even in the ball park. No amount of "money" is worth that to me.
Externally, from the USA -> out today..sorta bad news still, really debatable how much is really necessary and how much is just blood profits. I guess 10% necessary (at the most, maybe not even that..there is some there that is legit), 90% blood profits, around there.
There's a clear and present danger that the US could go back to internal warfare and genocide though, just balkanization, pull a USSR and collapse in a short time frame. Mostly it will depend how desperate all our fatcats get, to keep their little economic charade and power/control intact. They call it in their think tanks and wargames and military/paramilitary homerland security planning "continuity of government", which translates into "keep the crooks, idiots, and liars in charge, the exact same guys who were responsible for the major league screwups in the first place". And they will have plenty of order followers try to do just that.
If there is a serious externality of the FRN losing global reserve currency status, that'll be about it, party time over, hangover time begins. I would expect the USA to get pretty ugly, pretty quickly then. People just aren't gonna like going from first world "rich" to third world "a chicken costs four day's pay", at physical labor, poor status in a fast time frame. Which is exactly what would happen, and we are hovering now at odds-on of this becoming so.
No, it's technical, and this is what I think is going on here. It is economically technical, and I would bet/guess that higher level Moz folks are thinking about this right now. The planet is soon to be encumbered with some draconian restrictions on bits and bytes if you don't come up with the scratch that some folks demand for some of those bits and bytes. As soon as ACTA is made law all over, this "just download the naughty bits" that go to make your fav browser/OS/player "just work" for your listening and viewing pleasure will be tracked and people will start getting notices that this might result in getting their connection turned off, or worse, if they are distributing or facilitating the "naughty bits", perhaps charged with "enabling" or some other lawspeak.
Sure, there will still be ways to "get the codecs" and install them, just the real world cost of doing so inside nations that have more effective policing will go up. Right now, not much enforcement, after ACTA, this will change rather severely. When you have all these major economies switching from durable goods for creating wealth to "IP" licensing, the moneysuits who 100% control your "elected representatives" will determine what gets ignored or not, what gets enforced or not. They will want their money, or no vid soup for you, unless you want to go from being a "casual criminal", as it is now with not much enforcement, with not much worries for most people, like "ya, sure, just go to the unrestricted repositories and download.." wink wink nudge nudge, to "man, this sucks, a fifty grand fine! I ain't touching that stuff. I'll have to use the officially approved browser/OS/Player" level, which is (a big part of) what ACTA is all about.
This is coming soon to a computer reality near you. It's going to be a game changer. It's designed to be a game changer, they wouldn't be dorking around with it if it wasn't, and because they are, they will start enforcing their fees and restrictions a LOT more than what we have grown accustomed to.
Ya, some will say they can stay pure and just use "hooks" for this or that in the software to allow these naughty bits to work..those moneysuits see billions that they ain't got and billions that they do want, the politicians see their cut coming, and this duality will soon be dictating to the cops and prosecutors, and they won't give a rat's ass about minor software technical things like that, they will look at the end result "whole" and go "you are guilty, pay up or else".
This going to be for both content, and also how you get to experience this content.
When your friends dumped their iPhones (and perhaps the ATT contract), what hardware/carrier did they switch to..and why, besides the "cool" factor like you were mentioning. There must be at least some technical specification thought go into their next phone purchase, even if it is secondary to new and shiny.
Just wondering, especially on the handset switch, I do prepay only, no more long term contracts, I don't want to feed that particular telco business model, for the same reason I stick to OTA TV broadcasts and won't go to satellite (or cable, which I can't get anyway). Just don't need nor want more long term contractural debt. I can either pay for something right then, or not interested.
If this art auction goes to court to get a legal opinion on the validity of the sale terms and conditions, then this would become cross genre "performance art", as modern court procedure is way more theater than not.
As would also be the case if someone walked up to it wearing a rubber chicken suit and smashed it with a hammer, then ran off giggling....and I think the latter would have more socially redeeming artistic value...triple plus artistic good if simultaneously with the art piece..rearrangment from one into many little pieces of art... the original artist got flashmobbed wherever he was and got mass pied, and all of that got videoed and put up on youtube.
Anyway, this piece isn't all that original past the viral cost aspect, it is a plain nothing special (see, I can be an art critic) variation on that $999 app store "I'm steenking rich, neener neener" does absolutely nothing but cost money app they had up for a day or so. Or like those "buy a pixel" websites.
Now if the artist had any real talent, which he doesn't, the art piece would sprout robotic legs and walk off and go home in a nasty cussing hissy fit when some new price wasn't met....
Slashdot Mirror
15 bucks may seem OK to you, that's your business, but you also brought it up in a commentary forum, so I will comment. From my perspective, taking a longer range view of technology and society and business, you are encouraging them to keep trying to get 10,000% (whatever, some huge amount way over real production and delivery costs) markup prices for digital copies of stuff. I think that's shortsighted. I guess you make fair pay, but what about the rest of the planet for whom 15 bucks is a very considerable sum? Tough crap for those people?
You're force feeding the digital replicator tech monopolist trolls WAY too much there, bragging about it, and helping screw it up for the rest of the planet in the future by keeping prices just way way too high for these digital products. forced artificial scarcity. Just seems dumb to me to play make believe that some digital copy costs just so much to make and deliver, when it doesn't, it is nothing like a dead trees copy there, not even close.. Even ten bucks for some digital copy of a random book is way too expensive, it's ridiculous. Hey, why not brag about paying 200 grand for a toyota corolla? I'm sure there is some dealer out there would gladly markup to that level and take that much for one. Or maybe you can get one of those 999$ iPod apps that just says "I'm just so rich I can afford this app that does nothing but show how much it cost me, neener neener"? I mean, do you really want to encourage this price level for a few cents worth of electron transfer, and make it even worse? You said this was an academic question, so there it is in more detail, exactly why is this supposed to be a good deal for society in general terms, paying such a huge markup? How about the alternative, much cheaper per-copy costs, and have a MUCH larger sales potential then? How about that as a more fair alternative?
I say people should do this, stop paying that much for digital copies of stuff, and then however they want to go about it, email or phone calls or whatever, tell those content sellers they would be perfectly willing to buy product x, y or z, but only at a much fairer price level, a price level that reflects TRUE digital replicator costs to make and deliver new copies, for anything really, books, music, movies, software..whatever. If it can be made into a digital copy and transferred that way, it should be really cheap now, because that's the reality of the tech/engineering level we are at now.
I just hate large scale industry collusion to maintain artificial high prices in most anything, I don't care what the product is, tangible or intangible. It's even worse when people encourage that behavior and business practice by paying those bloated prices.
I thoroughly like the idea of ebooks and whatever, so that people all over the planet can get access to that, it is just ridiculous to think those sort of prices are fair or even a long range smart business decision.
Huge volume sales and really cheap prices are where it is at long range I think, at least it certainly should be. Charging 15 bucks for an ebook just knocks out about 3/4ths of the humans on the planet now from considering purchase, and even in the remaining 1/4 it is still serious price gouging.
I'm really not trying to be flambeau-bate here, just I seem by nature to take a longer range view of things, that's just how I look at stuff, always have. Digital copy prices today are a bad precedent now, and it needs to change.
How do the manufacturers load the OS in the first place? Seems like that is where to start looking, even to the point of tracking down the "real" manufacturer and asking them directly through a phone call or email. Maybe they need a hardhack to the mobo or something, soldered on flash, or is the OS on a ROM chip, or what? I just don't know. I notice it has USB as well, perhaps there, go from an external flash drive or optical drive? I don't know any answers there on running some flavor of linux on them, just replying that there are, in fact, ARM based cheapish netbooks out there at retail, they aren't all unobtanium yet as was suggested. Cherrypal sells some as well.
Right before I saw that thing in the store I had just gotten a new phone, so that blew my toy budget (which is a low amount of cash at any given time), else I would have gotten one for funzies.
I saw this for sale at Kmart right before Christmas for $150.
I saw that one before Christmas at my local kmart for 150 clams. Not a hundred bucks yet, but getting there
Ha, I am a strict Constitutionalist, a practical centrist, with the emphasis being the soverign individual first, then some powers to the states, then even less to the central government. the original idea.
I *wish* it was attempted, because I think it could actually work..
When it comes to corporations I just don't like crooks thieves and liars, nor vampire corporations that can get away with anything and can't be killed, just because of "making money" as their one and only priority. There needs to be a "three strikes and you are out" for corporations same as it is for individuals. It should be a lot easier to get their charters revoked.
I think *voluntary* collectivism is an interesting idea to run companies fairly and ethically, and still make a buck, like the movements in Argentina today. I'm not real big on large scale centralized planning (left or right wing), but as a voluntary thing, sure. I like the idea of eliminating the typical "workers versus management versus shareholders" internal war which screws up corporations today, and makes them work inefficiently and keeps everyone mad at the other guy. I think that's a lame stupid model. I think the owners should be the workers should be the managers, and share in the profits equitably. This would help eliminate all those bogus decisions based on "short term profits" mentality.
It is a companies sole responsibility to make money for its shareholders.
Ya, and that sucks, too, and it should be changed back to more of the original US model, where there were more duties and a lot more oversight into their conduct. Originally, it was a lot harder to get to be a corporation, charters were for a limited time, then a review before a renew, and you had to be publicly responsible, they couldn't be used to influence public policy, and a lot of other restrictions. Just "making profits" wasn't the sole criteria then to get granted a corporate charter.
A little reference:
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/history_corporations_us.html
As it is today, it seems like they can do just about anything they want to do, and even if they run afoul of the last remaining checks and balances on their behavior, if they can meet the fine and pass the costs down to their next customers..that's it, they just keep on.
And that's the problem, it's way to easy to have corporations now, and way too hard to get rid of the ones who engage in chronic serial antisocial or outright illegal behavior. They can come to life, but you can't kill them. And even if they screw up so bad they manage to go bankrupt, if they are big enough, they get emergency bailed out. I mean, WTF..you can't get rid of bad businesses or bad business creeps anymore? This is touted as some economic or social "good", because it "enhances shareholder value" or something? This is our loftiest goal?
What you said is certainly true today, but it is the cause of a lot of problems...
A lot of modern corporations look more like toxic invasive species superweeds to me than anything else.
And progressive fines, instead of fixed, based on income. That levels it out fast. Here is one reference from a DUI in Norway: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=29&art_id=nw20090512162514776C217806&set_id=1
The global arms industry exists just as much because it is profitable, as it is being really necessary. It falls into the ludicrous unreal geez-loweez that's a lot of loot profits range. There's huge bucks/roubles/yen/renminbi/euros whatever in prepping for wars and fighting wars, any size.
It is not just any one nation's fault, in other words.
nail meets hammer, etc.
Since when didn't Japan take huge chunks of the US economy? When I first started to drive, it was really rare to see a japanese car, as in..nevah. Now? Who needed emergency bailouts again, to keep from going completely bankrupt? How about electronics? I remember when all the TVs,radios, HiFis, etc were predominantly US made, that's what you saw in the stores and in people's homes, with germany actually being second tier, then, Japanese electronics hit. Whammmo they hit. Now, how many US made TVs are there and so forth? Like zero? How about heavy equipment? We are the largest farm in this area, and just for tractors.lemme see here..we have one US made, john deere (and their smaller ones they sell are just rebadged yanmars AFAIK) *six* japanese (kubotas), three german or austrian (deutz and vetter) (that's just tractors, of course we have all sorts of other equipment, mixed as well) (and Indian mahindras are starting to sell pretty good around here now). How about motorcycles? Way back you saw some US and english bikes mostly, (harleys and triumphs mostly, with the odd bmw thrown in) Now? Rough guess, what I see is 7/8ths japanese bikes on the road, with china taking the dinky scooter market so far, but they will be expanding that. And so on
Ya, it changes around, the main point from a US perspective to keep focused on isn't so much where stuff is sourced *from*, it is where it *ain't sourced from*, which is more and more daily the USA being the "ain't". We continue to lose manufacturing all across the industrial spectrum, which is value-added wealth creation that increases the internal economy to a large degree. And hand in hand with losing manufacturing over the last four decades now, the US government and economic overlords (same dudes in the revolving door wall street/DC government axis) have had to result to accounting tricks and issuing ever more stupid compounded IOU paper to give the appearance of prosperity.
The number one US manufactured *thing* today is debt. Followed by advanced military weapons.....contemplate some outcomes there for awhile..
You can only do that "debt manufacturing" for so long before good money stops being thrown at bad money. Eventually, the planet is going to call the US on its debt and just stop doing that. Interesting times then...
This reserve currency deal, that came about from the Marshall Plan and the petrodollar phenomenon, has made accumulating all this debt possible, but it sure isn't going to last forever. You can't do this accumulate more debt than what you make on a smaller personal scale forever, as everyone knows, you'll go bankrupt and get bounced out on the street and your ride go away to the repo man, nor can you do it on a medium scale, nor even a huge large scale.
The timeline varies on your bankruptcy and crash and repo man showing up, but not that outcome.
Thanks for the hot intel! Hmmm..dang flyin saucer attack..grumble..buncha bug eyed freaks....w-a-l-l-l, I know what *my* last ditch militia duty is! Them **&&^sa*(*&&itches ain't tangled with this old hippy redneck geek..no sirree... /me heads to the gunstore to score a case of 12 gauge goose shot.....and digs old powerbook outta the closet and loads it up with winderz viruses..
Ubuntu/Canonical is a large enough company now that they could start selling integrated software/hardware platforms that "just work". Sort of like apple, but all open source as the main difference. They could make money that way. If a local mom and pop whitebox shop can put together systems and make money at it, Canonical could too. Perhaps they could focus on the ARM chip to do this, and start with good affordable netbooks and nettops, and work their way up from there. Heck, maybe jump into cellphones for that matter.
...if we had put both of them together..way in the middle of the night into their mission..when no big bosses were around..the intern techs could have had ROBOT FIGHTS ON MARS! ..now, how cool is *that*? And even when they got busted for it, the news would have inspired another generation of young geeks 100 times more than now, leading to..one buhzillion dollars of new funding, thousands more young scientists, etc, just so maybe they could have a chance to goof off with the next generation of the most expensive toys evah. Another example? Nethack on early mainframes...young auto engineers ripping up the closed track in prototypes,,, stuff like that...golf on the moon, and dune buggy rides...if you look at our history, there has to be cool perks for real science and technology to go forward!
(only half joking, too..)
Russia's nuke research was greatly helped/jump started by industrial espionage during the WW2 lend-lease program, partly facilitated and financed by short term profits centered traders and compromised governmental functionaries inside the US and Canada. Nuke secrets and actual hardware, including uranium salts and more refined metals, were loaded on planes in the US and shipped there through Alaska into Siberia. They were able to bypass decades of research that way. After that, ya, good at it, but it was that jump start that kicked them into high gear.
Fast forward to today, and it is exactly what China has been doing now in a way for the last twenty years. Just the level of scientific and engineering help is much larger. They have been acquiring just mega loads of already developed tech to start with and work from, at firesale prices or free, heck, they get paid to just take it, that they can turn around and clone and refine and further develop, without doing much of the preliminary steps.
It has been a huge global market advantage for them, simply an enormous advantage, as is obvious looking at global finance today. The west has been giving them every possible industrial advantage, all so that the market traders and labor arbitragers can rake in huge short term profits. Of course China would take that deal, and has, free stuff, then work from there. They got bootstrapped a hundred years in technological development in 20.
China isn't the real problem with the decline of western economies, and it was predictable, and was. It has been the west's own business people in collaboration with some politicians basically selling them out and taking a fat skim in the middle. It's like those corporate raiders who do a hostile take over of some company, sell off all the juicy bits fast for huge short term profits, gut the companies, vote themselves a golden parachute then move on to their next victim/target. Except this has been on entire national scales. We let the looters..loot.
That's why so many of these western nations now have to bailout banks, watch their hard industries collapse, watch their trade deficits soar, watch their internal debt load soar, watch their unemployment levels soar, and resort to desperation governmental accounting tricks with their currencies, etc, to make it appear that things are better than they really are.
Just more cartel and collusion efforts to keep the prices of digitized bits extraordinarily higher than what a true market price would be, based on costs of making new copies. They have been so afraid to try a real market based approach, and make their money on migh higher sales, that they keep coming up with all this DRM nonsense and getting new laws and restrictions on the books, etc. This is not advancing society, it isn't anything for them to be proud of, and goes against every other major technical breakthrough humans have ever come up with. They are killing off replicator technology on purpose, throwing huge restrictions on it, and it has been a major blunder of a precedent.
*Eventually* there is going to be a credible lawsuit and court challenge that sorts out this mass collusion and multi cross cartel price fixing for products that have price X to produce in the first place, then all the official legal offerings/copies are are a hundred to a thousand times X at legal retail, when the real cost of a copy is a small fraction of a small fraction of that. Playing make believe that there is a natural scarcity of digital products, that they are the same as a tangible manufactured product.. is simply..well, it is silly, stupid, pretty nutso, short sighted, flies in the face of advancing the arts and sciences, flies in the face of having any government of all the people in the first place, etc. We are being held back by this terrible practice.
car related analogy,not exact but close: If the price of oil was 50 bucks a barrel to produce it, and cost for a gallon of fuel at all the "legal" pumps was 5,000 or 10,000 bucks, I think people would notice that someplace in there there was some serious shenanigans and price fixing and price gouging going on. With digital down loadable products, with the ability to make incredibly cheap "new copies" of said product, no matter what it is, it seems to still be unnoticed by any regulatory bodies as to what "fair and reasonable" might be.
And we have legal precedent to do this, well established, and I bet thoroughly enjoyed with no complaints whatsoever from the same exaqct people who want to maintain those ludicrous price gouging prices for digital products. We have municipal water supplies that are regulated so as to remain affordable, reasonable, and as fair as possible. Just take a wonder there if it was totally privatized and was sold at "what the market could bear" price, which phrase I *know* will be the first bitch about what I am writing about. Really, what do you imagine the price of water would get to then? How about centralized electricity delivery? You may have a few choices on that bill, but you are also having an overall reasonable cap on the prices set by your public utility commission, and the providers must go before them and make a fair case on any price increases they want. If it wasn't regulated thusly, they could wait for the biggest heat wave of the summer and up your price to 1,000% of what it was previously the day before. Take it or leave it Mr. sweaty guy, take it or leave it. Sure, you could do that... Or the coldest day of the winter and up your natgas delivery price 1000%. Now how about if the natgas guys, the electricity guys, the fuel oil guys, all of the above all set their prices at the same time up a thousand or ten thousand percent higher? That's the situation we have right now tith digital products, across the industry. Would people really go for that sort of thing with those other products? How about if all the major grocery stores just one day decide they were going to quintuple their prices on everything? Would the market bear that price? Well, of course, you could "choose" to just not eat that week, and "wait for the market to sort itself out better". Kinda hard when they are all doing the same exact thing too, though..that's why it is called a cartel, and why when stuff like this happens, we have congressional investigations and so on, because we are civilized, and decided a long time ago that business needed some regulati
Well. we will have to see, this is speculation after all. Freenet and sealand and tor and so forth type efforts..they could shut them down if they felt like it, at the major nodes. As it is now, I bet they leave them up just to monitor traffic. Heck, half of those entry and exit points are probably cops anyway...
Open wireless, make it a serious crime if someone does naughty things on your open wireless, people will start restricting them more and require verified logins. For example, my local library has wireless, but you must have a library card to access it, and you must show ID to get such a card. Businesses that currently run those things, like coffee shops and so on, will have their lawyers tell them to lock it down more. and most of them have security cams now, even if they don't require any ID to access, could be if later on they wanted to narrow it down, they could just correlate interesting traffic with the cam feed/storage, work from there.
In other words, it isn't as technically difficult as it seems, it is just in the past and even now they haven't really done it. That is what I think will change after ACTA is passed. They know or have a good idea what is what, look at that slashdot story now about shutting down people who got zombiefied (good idea there actually, at least slow them down and give them notice to get their computer dipped in disinfectant). Just about as much effort as it would take to notice who is doing what else they might want to look at or restrict. Deep packet and so on. Private VPNs..court order, one end or the other, or they could run a cutout and offer that service themselves, just for fishing expeditions. They already do that with drugs sales stings and prositution sales stings and official secrets stings., sop plenty of legal precedent there. "terrorism" "security" "economic protection against the evil haxorz" whatever, they will have some excuse or excuse.
All of that type stuff. You could easily see canonical and a lot of other linux distros not linking at all to things like DeCSS, or half the stuff that goes with mplayer, and mplayer itself have to go basically underground/dark net under a "making available" statute. Stuff like that.
I think for real world examples, in the face of opposition, perhaps look at how china keeps evolving their net access and content access restrictions, working hand in glove with the top networking manufacturers. Sure it can be circumvented, but it gets harder all the time for the people there to do so, and it will cross a point where joe or wong sixpack simply will not have any skills to defeat that, which joe or wong sixpack being 99.999% of the traffic.
The bottom line is *their* bottom line as regards how much tech and effort they will throw at this, and we don't know yet, because they are still working on that ACTA at the higherest international level. They have made no bones about enforcing "IP" in the strictest sense because that is what they want to use to replace manufacturing type jobs/serious income with in the west. This is potentially hugemongous gobs of money and interest now, so we have to extrpolate based on past similar interests how much effort and tech they will throw at this then. My guess is, "a lot". Not very scientific, but they will certainly be throwing a lot more than what they are doing now, else, what is the point of ACTA in the first place? They wouldn't even be fooling around with it.
So, we can agree to disagree, you think it won't be much different from today, I think it will shoot up and get a lot harder to be "casual" with IP issues, with a lot more busts, and a lot more media coverage and people getting scared when they start getting nasty gram warnings from their ISP. That isn't happening right now very much, but if and when, etc..
Change happens fast. I stay on the bleeding edge of like seven year old tech. Looking forward to my cheap smart...err..will be dumb phone soon.
I think technological change is *way* more fast now than in the past, the fastest it has ever been. I'm not that old, but I remember when most people didn't have TVs yet, and a lot of people didn't even have landline phones, so that's old enough to have somewhat of a longer range historical perspective. Fast changes then, but twin turbo with the nitrous button now.
It used to be you could be a generalist, and keep up with things, then a specialist, now you have to be a sub-specialist inside of a specialty, just to maintain the pace.
Read every single eurekalert press release for a few weeks, all the disciplines there, just to get a small smattering of a handle on it, just an overview, a summary...that's some serious fast change. We are crossing from what was dang woo-woo not too long ago into serious practical science, and quickly.
We are going to hit this "singularity" thing they talk about a lot sooner than most folks realize...if we don't major screwup and destroy the planet and ourselves *right* before that threshold is crossed first. And that's a big "if". If you include our evolution socially/psychologically, which we must in looking at the whole "human" thing, the two paths are not even close in maintaining parity in the speed of evolutionary change. Tech is outstripping the other important bits, by a large factor, which means we could screw up pretty bad. And that's my sci fi prediction, complete with cliffhanger, for the sequel.
Yo man, don't shoot the messenger here. I am just reminding about this new ACTA. I am not disputing the present or the past, they are what they are, just talking about the near future. They are going to be serious about it once that passes. that's the whole idea, and they got the juice to do it. You may not recognize it as a big deal yet, shoot, hardly anyone does, but it is there and eventually will be put into force. DeCss and so on, is exactly what I have been saying, they *haven't* been serious about enforcement, nor much for downloading copyrighted content. It's been joke level enforcement so far. This previous **AA "enforcement", for example, is just them getting warmed up and developing their tech to pull this off better. They will keep changing it around until they get something that works on a mass scale. so far, when they have started sending out the threatening letters for getting people to be bounced from the net connection, that has been working better than threats of cash lawsuits. After that will come blacklists, and no more net connections for people anyplace. All of this is set to change fast once they have even more legal precedent that will be in the form of this international treaty/agreement. A lot of these repositories and so on with "infringing" warez to make your box functional with various media will find it hard to find anyplace that will host them outside of the control of the RBN. The wild wild west days of the net are rapidly closing, the suits are going to want their money and way more control of the net, or else.
Thanks, I hadn't seen that, just looked it up. And technically he is correct, one of his quotes in the article, it was his grandfather who helped arrange the looting of the west to advance China so rapidly. He calls it marxist thought and discipline though, but it still happened. The west big biz leaders offered everything at firesale prices, for a very large cut, short term megaprofits. The Chinese leaders took that deal, realizing that they could suck it up for just one generation, then advance a hundred years in twenty, then eventually be top dog on the planet. They would have been stupid to not take that sellout deal from our quislings (unfortunately for us).
Ya, we learned from our mistakes and don't still do the same thing, at least internally. We went through our civil war and internal genocide a long time ago. And at least we play act at having different political parties and the oppression isn't as clear cut in your face, they remain more subtle about it...and it just isn't to the same degree as the chinese communist party/PLA does it today. I mean, I got beefs about our own government, serious beefs, but I sure as heck wouldn't swap it for their government. Not even in the ball park. No amount of "money" is worth that to me.
Externally, from the USA -> out today..sorta bad news still, really debatable how much is really necessary and how much is just blood profits. I guess 10% necessary (at the most, maybe not even that..there is some there that is legit), 90% blood profits, around there.
There's a clear and present danger that the US could go back to internal warfare and genocide though, just balkanization, pull a USSR and collapse in a short time frame. Mostly it will depend how desperate all our fatcats get, to keep their little economic charade and power/control intact. They call it in their think tanks and wargames and military/paramilitary homerland security planning "continuity of government", which translates into "keep the crooks, idiots, and liars in charge, the exact same guys who were responsible for the major league screwups in the first place". And they will have plenty of order followers try to do just that.
If there is a serious externality of the FRN losing global reserve currency status, that'll be about it, party time over, hangover time begins. I would expect the USA to get pretty ugly, pretty quickly then. People just aren't gonna like going from first world "rich" to third world "a chicken costs four day's pay", at physical labor, poor status in a fast time frame. Which is exactly what would happen, and we are hovering now at odds-on of this becoming so.
Some good points there. I'll add prescott bush and company back then, IBM, a buncha big banks, and operation paperclip.
sorta sucks, but money and profits always seem to come first with the fatcat crowd.
No, it's technical, and this is what I think is going on here. It is economically technical, and I would bet/guess that higher level Moz folks are thinking about this right now. The planet is soon to be encumbered with some draconian restrictions on bits and bytes if you don't come up with the scratch that some folks demand for some of those bits and bytes. As soon as ACTA is made law all over, this "just download the naughty bits" that go to make your fav browser/OS/player "just work" for your listening and viewing pleasure will be tracked and people will start getting notices that this might result in getting their connection turned off, or worse, if they are distributing or facilitating the "naughty bits", perhaps charged with "enabling" or some other lawspeak.
Sure, there will still be ways to "get the codecs" and install them, just the real world cost of doing so inside nations that have more effective policing will go up. Right now, not much enforcement, after ACTA, this will change rather severely. When you have all these major economies switching from durable goods for creating wealth to "IP" licensing, the moneysuits who 100% control your "elected representatives" will determine what gets ignored or not, what gets enforced or not. They will want their money, or no vid soup for you, unless you want to go from being a "casual criminal", as it is now with not much enforcement, with not much worries for most people, like "ya, sure, just go to the unrestricted repositories and download.." wink wink nudge nudge, to "man, this sucks, a fifty grand fine! I ain't touching that stuff. I'll have to use the officially approved browser/OS/Player" level, which is (a big part of) what ACTA is all about.
This is coming soon to a computer reality near you. It's going to be a game changer. It's designed to be a game changer, they wouldn't be dorking around with it if it wasn't, and because they are, they will start enforcing their fees and restrictions a LOT more than what we have grown accustomed to.
Ya, some will say they can stay pure and just use "hooks" for this or that in the software to allow these naughty bits to work..those moneysuits see billions that they ain't got and billions that they do want, the politicians see their cut coming, and this duality will soon be dictating to the cops and prosecutors, and they won't give a rat's ass about minor software technical things like that, they will look at the end result "whole" and go "you are guilty, pay up or else".
This going to be for both content, and also how you get to experience this content.
When your friends dumped their iPhones (and perhaps the ATT contract), what hardware/carrier did they switch to..and why, besides the "cool" factor like you were mentioning. There must be at least some technical specification thought go into their next phone purchase, even if it is secondary to new and shiny.
Just wondering, especially on the handset switch, I do prepay only, no more long term contracts, I don't want to feed that particular telco business model, for the same reason I stick to OTA TV broadcasts and won't go to satellite (or cable, which I can't get anyway). Just don't need nor want more long term contractural debt. I can either pay for something right then, or not interested.
If this art auction goes to court to get a legal opinion on the validity of the sale terms and conditions, then this would become cross genre "performance art", as modern court procedure is way more theater than not.
As would also be the case if someone walked up to it wearing a rubber chicken suit and smashed it with a hammer, then ran off giggling....and I think the latter would have more socially redeeming artistic value...triple plus artistic good if simultaneously with the art piece..rearrangment from one into many little pieces of art... the original artist got flashmobbed wherever he was and got mass pied, and all of that got videoed and put up on youtube.
Anyway, this piece isn't all that original past the viral cost aspect, it is a plain nothing special (see, I can be an art critic) variation on that $999 app store "I'm steenking rich, neener neener" does absolutely nothing but cost money app they had up for a day or so. Or like those "buy a pixel" websites.
Now if the artist had any real talent, which he doesn't, the art piece would sprout robotic legs and walk off and go home in a nasty cussing hissy fit when some new price wasn't met....