Hell ya I got angry with your veiled assertion that because some company had some brains on staff that other brains aren't out there in the open source community. I thought that was a real cheap shot and why I went with my name, to follow the response easier.
And you still haven't answered the main capitalist "bottom line" question, which is what this is all about, money. More money one way, or the other?
Can you point to any other hardware sales LOST because the hardware ran on open source? This is a very simple question and gets directly to the heart of the argument. They have to "stay closed and secret" because they will "lose money". OK, swell, I got that part, I understand the argument, now, show me the beef, I keep being shown the bun, but where's the beef?
ATI and nVidia *think* they might lose sales, they don't know that for a fact. They obviously believe that-I'll grant that-I just think they are scared and still locked into last century's business model and can't see the big picture cleanly or clearly enough (**AA's as well for that matter). i.e.; they just "don't get it" with open source, completely fail to see that the advantages outweigh the perceived "dangers" by a huge margin.
I assert, which is an opinion and not data, which-ever one-right now, today-went to pure open source would actually pull far ahead of the other in a relatively short time span. That's easy enough to grok. That the combination of good hardware combined with greatly enhanced enthusiasm from a LOT more coders wanting to help make their cards better on the software side would magnify as a force multiplier their own in-house coders efforts and result in even higher sales. That's my posit.
OK, we shouldn't confuse theoretical assumptions with hard data, yes? We can agree on that point? OK then, we need some examples to prove their's-and your's- point. Go ahead, be my guest!
I need to see some examples of where a hardware vendor, previously using closed source only, went to open source and lost significant sales because of the fact, and that the decision to go open source was the primary reason for the lost sales. That's the closest we could have to a real world example. I'll wait for some examples, and I will accept their validity if/when I can see some.
I am not aware of any, and nor do I know every single thing about all hardware business out there. I see a lot of counters to that though. I *have* seen that places like IBM have really gone out to try and incorporate more and more open source and it certainly hasn't hurt their hardware sales any, and they are significantly larger than either video card maker and in a competetive and similar market - "computer hardware". I have seen examples like FF pull completely away from what MS has in the browser arena. And so on. This is an oft discussed theme here, there are a lot of examples showing that open sourcing is being adopted more and more by more companies, and they all seem to mostly like it, they start seeing benefits and improvements. It is not the predominat case yet, I will grant that as well, but it is growing fast. Are all these innovators wrong? Are they lying? I don't know, I can only go on what I read and see and experience.
Really, show me an example someplace to make your assertion of a higher probability of "lost sales due to open sourcing the code". If it is so probable, surely there must be a plethora-even just one real good one- of examples out there to use as references to affirm the counter.
We sure as heck have long ago needed an oil BUYERS cartel, were we make an offer to the oil companies and not be stuck at the "pay us what we demand you stupid suckers" level. If the oil companies can form a SALES cartel, we could have-on a national or even regional level-an oil PURCHASERS cartel. Their oil is pretty much useless to them without people buying it and handing them some cash. The larger our purchasers cartel, the better we would be in a pricing negotiation scenario with them.
Transportation fuel is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity for modern life, whether you "personally" drive a car or not, you are still relying on it. As such, pricing needs to be either regulated with outside caps, or, we can form giant buyers cartels to level this market playing field a little better.
In fact, you have strayed into the compounded strawman argument fused with completely false assumptions, and gone from there somehow conviced that is "fact".
Google WOULDN'T EXIST without open source. They wouldn't have a single dollar. There would not be a google as you see it now. That they only open some of their stuff means even there they still don't fully "get it", yet, besides that, they still managed to garner huge market share, PRECISELY BECAUSE OPEN SOURCE CODE WAS THERE FOR THEM TO USE. They kicked the shit out of MSN precisely because they came in on open source and that is the primary advantage they had.
You also make some utterly and arrogantly *lame* assumption (getting to be a habit with you, you might want to get that checked at the shrinks) that the open source community doesn't have MIT grads or EEs or Phds working in it. OMG OUR COMPANY HAS REAL SMART GUYS!!! NOBODY ELSE DOES THAT MAKES US THE BESTUS AUTOMAGICALLY!!ONE
Ya, SO WHAT? You lose,you lose BIG TIME right there, demonstrably false directly on this board, there are TONS of high level superior brains working on open source code, you can see that readily.
Now, back to a video card, PROVE that their hardware wouldn't get better with major contributions from the community, and come in faster than what the "closed source" community would provide for "the other brand". Prove it, that's your claim, so prove with some real world examples, give us the list of other type hardware vendors who lost major sales because their hardware runs on open source code. Give us THE BIG LIST, where is it? Can you point to serious LOST SALES?
Try again, PROVE some hardware vendor lost a sale-that's you ENTIRE POINT, LOST SALES OR NO SALE BASED ON OPEN SOURCE DRIVERS, because the hardware was running on open source and the competition wasn't, or could run on open source just as well as closed source and that open source was readily available. Give an example of lost sales, go ahead.
I like nvidia cards, I purchased a what to me was an expensive video card. Not top of the line, I can only afford a couple of generations back, but certainly good enough for my purposes now. If nvidia had a truly open source driver, does that mean automatically I would NOT buy a card from them because of that, that I would just flee overnight to ATI because for some reason they just "must" be better now? Any "advantage' that ATI might have would STILL BE IN THE NVIDIA CARD DRIVER, now wouldn't it?
This is why you don't get it on open source, you flat out refuse to see this, you think by opening the code you are THROWING IT AWAY, you AREN'T, you STILL GET TO KEEP IT, no one has "stolen" anything from you. You are selling VIDEO CARDS, that's where the cash comes from. And you get the code first while you are working on it, so how does that change things with 'the competiton" again? they don't see it until you dump it on the market, you have a huge lead time then, and after that, you STILL have lead time because something as important as that WILL get serious major effort donated to it, because it is in the USERS-your customers-best interest now, even MORESO than previously. They now have a stake in your business to make sure it stays working correctly and makes good stuff, so not only do you still get the cash for the cards, you get fre help to make the cards better.
I am just an average typical user, but we'll let some others chime in here, maybe someone in charge of purchasing a lot of desktops for their business, now would anyone "you" reading this NOT BUY A VIDEO CARD for those machines if there was a very good open source driver for it, direct from the devs at the manufacturer, with fully open contributions from the open source community? Or would you insist on the closed competition card?
This is a yes/no proposition, all things elsewhere take it as a near level playing field and considered, the hypothetical machines need video cards of some good qulity.
If yes, OK- that is understood, if the answer is NO, you WOULD NOT PURCHASE THOSE CARDS, why wouldn't you?
Pretty much already done did that. I don't get any new media discs,well, a very few, I restrict my purchases now to used primarily or the severely marked down bargain bins, and those are around maybe 4 units per annum I give my GF as cheap gifts (she likes movies way more than I do). I only watch a very few selected shows on TV, and even those most irregularly, primarily I catch the local weather, and watch a few selected olympic sports when they come around and an occassional nature special or news special. In other words, not enough commercials exposure to matter really. Maybe catch around 4 movies a year on tape, usually just rainy day watch something I already have. Music-meh, stopped going to concerts around the time ticket prices were headed towards ten bucks a show, which will really date me now. Recorded music, about the same as vids now, maybe half a dozen a year used CDs, a little OTA fm music in the car. Downloads-zero, either vids or music, none. I read news and opinion on the net, and the rest of the time my "culture" consists of being outside and doing outside stuff, either working or playing around with my hobbies.
I am more concerned over the political ramifications of locked down hardware and software. I don't like them taking away the gadgeteer's factor, the tinkerer's drive, making being curious and innovative a *crime*. trashing your "fair use" as a regular joe to take a wrench to your machine and make it "yours". I don't code myself but I totally "get" what drives open source coders, and agree with it. I build my own systems from normal parts, and I am not looking forward to having to jump through engineering hoops to maintain parity with whatever "openness" we have in hardware now, and be looking over my shoulder the whole time. I don't like the fact that big media and big news is falling into fewer and fewer hands, and that government is now in the stealth news business as official..well, brainwashing is the word, as official brainwashing policy.
And so on. Even though an individual may be able to counter this or that threat to his freedom through personal leet skills, we all have to work together, pool resources, be relentless, and try to respect and help the other guy maintain HIS freedoms as well. We will either all win or all lose in this game, so it is better, IMO, to always fall on the side of openness and freedom. If that changes some "business models" in society, I don't care, society still marches on, and some business models might be needing some changing anyway. There is no "right" to perpetual profits at the expense of other's freedoms, and limiting technological advances to only certain very wealthy segments of society who can control the actual law making process or who set up cartels to force you into accepting what you know is counterproductive for the advancement of Humans is..well, it's just not very cool. "Treacherous Computing" is very well named in this respect. Just say NO.
It looks more like they are planning some craptacular (via a scam chip buried someplace in the machine) way to make it impossible to view their (someone "their's") expensive "intellectual property" unless it is in the approved format of the week. Crack one level, you still have to view it, only to meet the new craptacular connection and monitor, tough noogies again. Call it defense of profits in depth, hard wired. Hit 'em in the hardware, hit 'em in the software, double nail them with laws, eventually they have 99% of the people buffaloed into economic submission..
Of course, that is a real wild guess....I am just a skeptic by nature when it comes to this sort of thing - "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 7,963 times, shame on me" deal.. "New and Improved" - from big industry sources, most always translates as "a new conjob they have come up with and an improved way to keep sucking dollars out of your wallet"
Way back before teh intarweb, I was working in a factory and really *needed* a raise, I just couldn't cut my bills with what I was getting. I liked my job OK, just needed around another half a buck an hour or so (which was significant then). I found a job listing in the paper at a rival factory, similar job to what I was doing. I left the news paper classifieds opened to that page on my workbench and took a long lunch hour, like an hour and a half. I never applied for the other job,just went and ate lunch, but when I got back the foreman was waiting for me and I got took to the office, where I got my raise. I had already made a request previously and gotten shut down.
Yep, a calculated risk, could have gotten fired, etc. At that point, I didn't care, either way I was not getting enough loot, plain and simple, it was either get the raise or go seriously looking around anyway, so I thought I would try silly melodrama and it worked.
Today,though, I don't think I would do that, I would make dang sure I had another job before borking the current one, the job climate is not the same today and all the cost of living factors are so much higher (relative AND bar knapkin figures adjusted for inflation).
So, what is wrong with using a code name on job applications, at least the web facing ones? You could at least have the first level of anonymity that way for your resume.
Simply Mepis has vids, courtesy of Roblimo and his "point and click linux" book. You get the Mepis OS, a DVD video disk and a dead trees manual. A noob kit in other words. About as noob friendly as possible, you can be watching the vid he made on the TV and doing stuff on the computer, just follow along with it.
Same here, I completely ignore the media check part now. I installed fine when they said the ISOs were bad (note: haven't gone to 5, I skip every other fedora release now, once a year is way more than enough). I don't trust the media checker thingee.
It is called the rigid bag container, or briefcase. A briefcase with additional clip on adjustable shoulder strap for really long walks perhaps. A briefcase is nice and stout, locks, it is "professional business acceptable" looking, is a nice flat surface for a handy portable "table" to set things on, and certainly has enough room for what you are looking to carry. 15$ for a good sized one at most *mart brand department stores, plain jane aluminum. Spend what you want after that I suppose, virgin lizard leather interior or whatever.... here's a thought, knowing how you like neat stuff, you can always measure it and find a nice solar panel that fits that you could screw to the outside of the side that faces "out" when you are carrying it, probably the "top" of the case when you set it down. Drill a hole and snake in the connector, be trickle charging some gadget as you travel around. I have several small ones sort of that size, none of them are all that heavy. The unisolar flexi panels I have are the lightest. In fact, there's a product right there (might exist but I haven't looked either), a briefcase where the sides *are* solar panels to begin with, those are the sides, just find an existing one that has good frames, use two obviously, what the heck, a nifty "power black" color is an added "high tech geek fashion" bonus. elegant, yet practical...
Both type efforts (archaeology and minerals/oil location) are benefiting from satellite remote sensing. We just recently had the lost city in guatemala found, the huge impact craters in the sahara, etc from satellite analysis (radar/photo). The impact craters were also helped by web based universal access, google maps helped amateur researchers there.
As to the bosnian pyramid, it has long been known/suspected there in the locals handed down oral histories. It was more accurately RE-discovered. Just like when western scientists "discover" some new animal the locals have been *eating* forever and have names for.
There's another interesting development off the coast of cuba, an alleged underwater city.
(I am sure there are better links for those stories)
It's an interesting topic. A lot of oral and written tradition from around the world all relate a period in history with a "great flood". It will be nice if modern tech helps us discover what really happened and add to our knowledge of the real "olden days", whichever way it shakes out.
Maybe by changing your greeting you can help speed things up. I'll add the inflection and tonals
"Hello (higher and faster than normal,because you stretch it out very slightly, end the O Long "Hellll-O), you are speaking to the computer help desk (this is lower pitched and slower, just slightly, with an exact matching linear cadence on the syllables, they are all equal), this is Matt (emphasis on "this"), how may I help you with your problem?(how is treated like the first "hello", end the "you" a little louder, notmuch, just a little 'in soviet russia...YOU'..."
This is psychology and salesmanship, and double reinforces to the customer the primary thing that is going on, they aren't calling *Matt*, they are calling *the help desk and they are annoyed with voodoo that has nailed them*. It's just a slight wordage variation with the addition of just a few more words and paying attention to how it sounds, but it amplifies the initial interaction so that both parties can get quickly to the point. Also remember, you are a sales person, even if you aren't selling anything tangible per se, you are immediately in a customer/sales position. You are "selling" a service that your "customer" never even wanted to be forced to buy in the first place, so it's a "tough sell", your customer IS approaching you with a negative based mindset, ie, they already have a problem which has annoyed them to some level, so you have to be extremely delicate and precise, but control the situation and your only tools are language and psychology.
Right off the bat they will need to be defused down from their anger (whatever level that anger is at, it *is* there), and they have to be re-assured that this will "work", that by the end of the conversation they will be a happy camper-and you have made a "sale", you have "closed". Tone of voice is very important as well, it makes a big difference. You need to sound enthused, happy, and *very* confident. You only have two sentences total in the beginning to establish the mood and probable outcome of the call, no matter the problem.
Anyway, fool around with it, try some experiments, it's amazing what slight variations can do to help out.
Yes, that is the proper way to go about it. For the long term anyway, although I am sure initially they all resisted it, but perhaps not given a different social climate in Norway from the US. Here, manufacturers have been very slow to take back stuff, even something as useful as aluminum beverage cans has created controversy when they put a nickel deposit on them to make sure they got recycled insted of dumped.
I'll give you a prime example of how screwed up this is. In my area, rural, the local city government were I live doesn't have free trash pickup, nor recycling. Instead what they do is charge you so much a lb to go to the dump. The result is the ditches on the sides of the road are knee deep in trash and garbage. It's stupid and disgusting, and obvious why it happens. If all the manufacturers had to take back their used stuff and the packaging, etc,(or they subbed it out to companies dedicated to that) so that when you went to the store you could take the selected chunks of trash and dispose of them properly, it would work, after a short readjustment period. Especially if you got paid a small token to bring the stuff in, I would bet most stuff would get recycled then.
Marketing is both an art and a science, but it isn't perfect, and it constantly changes. I just think (and I know I am not alone, you can see other folks saying similar on prices) that current prices are too high and haven't dropped with tech advances like they should and could. Before iTunes, they REALLY resisted 99cent songs as single downloads, they didn't think it would work and be too cheap, etc.. The marketers gotten proven pretty wrong on that. I am only just me, but I USED to be a big consumer of media, but almost stopped from the price gouging. I buy a few disks a year, that's it. I remember with every paycheck I went and bought some vinyl, and also hit the concerts fairly often. Now, about zip for either. Not worth it, too expensive. the reason why renting VHS tapes took off was precisely for price reasons,. at the time all you could get was very expensive tapes,so most people opted for a few bucks rental over 30-40-50 bucks purchase. Eventually they dropped tape prices down as tech advanced, but then they hit a plateau and plastic optical disks came around, BINGO, a REAL cheap way to make copies. so where's the price drop?? Not seeing it. the players/readers dropped in price immensely, tech marches on, why are the copies still high? I maintain gouging, and their marketrs just 'report" what the bigshots want to hear anyway. that's a guess but bet I am right on that. Now they have the tech to actually SELL the disks at the previous rental price for tapes. And the cost of stamping and shipping is MUCH lower than making and shippong tapes. Ball is in their court now, drop prices, they will see the same thing that happened with itunes and with tape rentals, the sweet spot is NOT 20$. Maybe for the top 5% income earners it is plenty cheap enough, but everyone else buys much less than what they might be inclined to. People won't want to pirate much at all once they can get what they want cheap enough and legal enough.There has to be a middle ground here someplace, they just can't claim with a straight face that todays copy tech is even close to being as expensive as it was ten years ago, but that is the price range they are stuck at. Does-not-compute except as delibarate gouging and industry PR obfuscation and FUD.
For the record I don't download either. I did one MP3 one time, a legit one off the bands site,and never any movies at all. I grab a few disks a year from yard sales or pawnshops or the bargain marked down bin, that's it, music or movies. The only way I have to vote with those folks is with my wallet and ranting on the net, so I have "voted"..
....a decent market share. A few good ones really. First, foremost and of utmost importance is hardware support, still in 2006 much less than perfect, especially for the average non guru. Computers today are a lot more than simple box with a cheap spreadsheet and word processor onboard, they have to do a variety of things and usually rely on additional outside hardware and things like newish video and sound cards, etc. you will have to admit, functionality there is less than perfect, BUT, if "Linux" had a much larger market share, the vendors would pony up with their offerings.
Second is cost due to aggravation, how many people have torn their hair out over getting their boxes pwned, been cootified, etc and have to take it to the fixit shop due to a near monopoly and bad coding? This is a real world, affects businesses, home owner level users, etc, up and down and sideways in the computing food chain, and it's mainly because the "market leader" has done such a bad job. We all get to pay for that though, even if we don't personally use their products, we are still affected by them in day to day living because so many others do. I'll call it the hidden expensive headache tax.
Another hidden cost-my taxes, your taxes, going in large part to buy single seat licenses by the millions probably for a variety of redmond brand products, a humongous real expense that is mostly unnecessary for the bulk of government useage.
A further advantage would be speed in computing advances. Basing our societal advances on what a single closed source lumbering giant company releases is..well, it is silly. Sorta lame really. Bad car analogy time. Would we be better off with one giant planetary car company, then just a few hobbiest cars on the side, like only a few percent? I sorta doubt it...
We need better alternatives and the alternatives have to be adopted (somehow) in such numbers as to be significant. Ya, we are nerds, and can "deal with it" and have fun, but we as nerds have a sort of duty to help out the rest of the planet with what we think up and make and do as well. It's not written in any sort of law, but I think we all have a little service to humanity deal going, and helping nudge along something better/cheaper/faster/freer is part of it. Or *should be*, call all of that just my opinion on it.
..a major vendor moves into offering a linux desktop in a big way, and I don't mean two models hidden back in their website that takes 10 clicks to find. When/if that happens, whichever distro they pick will start to become an industry standard. They *aren't* going to be picking any of the random hobbiest distros you see below the top 5 at distrowatch, that is a given, so I think folks who really want linux to suceed on the desktop need to take that into mind. Someone (a big hardware company) is going to crack first, my best guess is HP. But who knows there, just guessing at that one. IBM got out of the lower end market, so they are out (pity, I think they could have pulled it off) There IS a market for an easy to use, works outta the box, supreemly GUI intensive joe user linux desktop, if it existed. Right now there are several that are close, but not quite. And six month release schedules do NOT make a stable release. joe user is not even close to being interested in jumnping through that hoop, they want it pre installed and not have to fool around with it for a few years, until such a time comes as they want a new machine. I'd call it three years instead of 6 months, just do incremental security upgrades and make the dang thing work. We geeks don't care, but that leaves the other 99% of the population that does care, and don't want to be bothered with the complexity of brand new twice a year, said complexity that always seem to come with older stuff that worked before now broken and new stuff pushed as full release which is still betaware for most practical purposes. Now apple does it near yearly, but they have a slightly different market. I see linux fitting between windows and apple in that regard, on the desktop I mean.
...gives you a unique perspective and brings home reality over their BS they spew. I'm in a similar half a century + change personally screwed by those bozos. A couple of my pet peeves are them continuuing to muck about with gun rights after they promised the 68 act would be "it", no more after that, and later on with the huge illegals amnesty during the reagan years (I think, don't remember, 84??), then they said they would "crack down" and "enforce the laws on the books".
Oh ya, my all time *favorite* "random courtesy roadblocks". WTF is up with that?? Remember back in school we were taught only supremely evil and totalitarian bad places like east germany and whatnot had those sorts of roadblocks (Your papers please!) and how wrong and illegal it would be here?
Man, there's a bunch. You are right, people of a younger age don't have any frame of reference on some of these subjects outside of an academic one.
Now here's one I keep trying to maintain a frame of reference on, the great depression. It's hard, but I try, I keep it in the back of my mind when I look at economic news andd geopolitical events. I wasn't around then, but my parents and aunts and uncles, etc, were, and I distinctly remember the stories they told me about it and how amazingly fast things can change and how utterly bogus the stock market/government currency manipulators are when it comes to hosing the population with their congames. Keep promising them just this huge something for nothing deal until they are all sucked in, then WHAMO, drop the hammer and walk off with all the REAL wealth leaving the peons holding the bag with worthless paper. Seems they pull this stunt on a big scale every other generation or something, because it takes that long for people to "forget" those "leaders" main skill set is *lying*. They are professional grifters.
the same marketing guys who told them VHS tapes would sell for over 50$? them guys? I don't have the stats handy, but I bet once they dropped to 20 or lower they sold a lot more and made "more net profit" on them. I know at the first release prices I bought zero, but after that I bought a lot, but when they stopped dropping pricesw, and especially with DVDs maintaining the same margins for years and no price drops, I buy very few of them.
You can see similar sentiment from other people on these movies and piracy threads, people know what it costs, they know when they are getting gouged or not, so they react accordingly. The movie guys know that too, that is in the article itself,look up, check it out, so you can argue with them and tell them they are wrong. I am *agreeing* with them, I just wish they would drag the same idea to the US, because tech advances are way past the time they could have had severe price drops on pre recorded media. they are trying to maintain price levels established years and years ago now, time for the "tech makes things a lot cheaper" to hit the retail shelves. While their movies have held steady at around 20$, the players have dropped from 300$ to 30$ in the same time frame. This is called a "clue". Stuff on a disc is mass manufactured cheap stuff, they could still make a ton of loot and keep their customers beyond happy and sell a LOT more than what they do now by simply dropping prices down to a more reasonable level. EXACTLY the same as in every other business out there. If there were no tech advances, and there was no way for them to make the discs cheaper, than I would agree, "marketing" would be right on, but that isn't the case, it *is* much cheaper for them to make them over the past 5 years or so, so marketing is just telling their bosses what they want to hear. And the bosses make the decision, and the bosses are all multimillionaires who to them 20 bucks is change spilled on the floor, they *think* it's as close to free as you can get, it's what they leave for a tip at a cheap breakfast someplace. they don't relate to working stiffs. they live in places like Hollywood with those insanely high prices for everything, they don't actually grok how the rest of the nation outside of aa handful of large urban areas live or what people make or what stuff costs. Then they wonder why sales are dropping.
This is duh time.
EXCEPT in china, in the article, THERE they "get it" and know if they don't drop prices they will hardly sell any legitimately.
this is true, but it wasn't my point. they have a huge disconnect on what that stuff is worth, and IF they were selling enough, they wouldn't be complaining about the piracy, because at a cheap enough point, a lot more people would be buying the discs. that was the whole point of the article, they DO recognize that at the prices they are charging legitimately now (in china) most people don't care and go buy the "pirate" copies instead. I know I can go into walmart and get any number of older movies for $5 or even less sometimes, so I know it's possible for them to sell movies on DVDs for much less than what they charge now. Volume sales works.
These are the same companies when VHS tapes first came out tried to get 60-70 dollars for a tape, because their "marketing" told them that is what people would purchase them for. They sold some, but not that many at that price point. That more or less failed except for the video rental business, because they could sell them over and over again.That loss to the video rental stores which took off forced them to reconsider their outright sale price. Once they dropped their prices down severely, they sold a *lot more due to volume sales pricing* and it became profitable for them. Maybe not as high per tape, but they sold a ton more tapes and it became common for people to start building home libraries of them. And no way (today) is stamping a DVD costing more than making a complex tape and shipping it around, DVDs should be much cheaper than they are now new, same with music CDs, and I predict they will be dropping prices sometime to reflect that.
..but you can get some pretty cheap tractors from China now if you are willing to spend a couple weekends re-assembling them. They are called "crate tractors" and are shipped partially disassembled packed in a wooden crate. For less than 6 grand you can get approx 15 grand worth of compact diesel tractor.
The DVDs here, heck ya they could sell them a lot cheaper and still make a profit. Volume sales. At $20 I buy none, same at $15. Drop that to $5 I buy a few, $3 for bits on a plastic disk (let alone the $1.50 figure in the article), and I would buy a lot. The movie and music moguls at the top who make the final decision on what a "good" retail sales figure are can't see this sort of situation applies to a considerable amount of the population, they are universally multi millionaires and think $20 is dirt cheap already. $20 to them is like 50 cents or a quarter (whatever) to "normal" people.
Amish kids are allowed a year to go out into the world and go hog wild, use high tech, wear colorful clothes, yada yada, all the stuff they don't do back at the ranch.. This is to show them that going back to the simpler ways is actually better, and most choose to go back. Not all, but most.
Hey, looked it up, here is the more detailed wikipedia entry for it, this deal with the kids has a name, "rumspringa"
As to tech, they can and do *slowly* adopt new tech. Every step is debated in their councils. Just hit the generic wikipedia entry for amish to read about them.
..I'd sure invest as in reasonable cash money into an OS and applications desktop-oriented distro that upfront prominently said that their main purpose was NOT new eye candy but secure bug-free as possible code, and that part of what I was paying for was constant overlapping audits. That concept - run through the appropriate marketing speak translator - might help sell an open source distro in the general market place.
BAD CAR ANALOGY TIME
I can see the TV commercial, new shiny whizzbang motors latest release! Mega fins and wings, curb feelers, 29 channel surround holovision, purple paint with flames and giant rims with triple reverse spinners! Plus, its an SUV *and* an economy car, at the same time! Or so says the advert....
Dude goes to drive it off the carlot after buying it, heads out to the "information superduperhighway" the road sign says, he gets two flats immediately,an oil slick under the car appears, a couple of wheels fall off,the hood pops open, magic smoke release, bad guys jump out of the side of the road and mug him, take his wallet and credit cards,and etc.
Cut to the next scene, a normal looking solid car, smiling driver, driving right past the gas station and not pulling in, right past the carlot where the previous guy just got his new whizzbang, right past where he is broke down on the road and got robbed, now there's a cop car there with the blue lights..... keeps driving, gets out at home, walks into his normal looking house..fade back to the driveway...the camera zooms in to the odometer on the dash, it reads 2,678,000 miles on it.....
Announcer in the background goes..."Now really, which would you rather drive?"
that is pretty spiffy! I bookmarked that link to their product page, and 99 bucks doesn't seem all that unreasonable if it is as comfortable as they say (or it looks). Keyboard and mouse takes three hands! nuts! It's always seemed 'tarded to me that way... And I have tried trackpad keyboards, don't like them, something like this, though, where you can sit back in a comfy chair and surf and type looks pretty neat.
...until software comes with some sort of normal consumer warranty "suitable for purpose" "works as advertised" and etc.
Until then, most EULAs are just variations on claiming it won't work as advertised most likely and really isn't suited for the purpose at hand, but you can try it anyway.. They should just cut to the chase and do a one liner - "you are a sucker and retard if you accept this magic beans accumulation and expect it to work, now, gimme my candy!"
It would about have to come from a voice interface then. One that worked. A bluetooth or wired headset and just...talk to the machine. Then it could be small.
I so much agree on the tiny, I detest having to go get new cell phones, it has gotten to the point I can barely use them they have gotten so small. All this new really small stuff is designed with young humans with tiny fingers and great eyes in mind it appears. It doesn't matter how tiny the device is if you just can't use the thing, doesn't matter how many features it has if you can't see the screen or manipulate the buttons.
Note to hardware companies-look around the western world, the population with a lot of disposable income is neither real young nor do they have great eyes. Stiff fingers/arthritis and bifocals are *common*. You want those folks business, keep that in mind when you are designing stuff. These companies are telling folks who think nothing of dropping 100 grand on an RV that their market segment isn't worth releasing products designed with them in mind. Pretty much a huge missed business opportunity there near as I can see..with my bifocals. Keep saying FU to that market and it will reply in kind. Cater to it, you *might* get some bizznezz...
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Hell ya I got angry with your veiled assertion that because some company had some brains on staff that other brains aren't out there in the open source community. I thought that was a real cheap shot and why I went with my name, to follow the response easier.
And you still haven't answered the main capitalist "bottom line" question, which is what this is all about, money. More money one way, or the other?
Can you point to any other hardware sales LOST because the hardware ran on open source? This is a very simple question and gets directly to the heart of the argument. They have to "stay closed and secret" because they will "lose money". OK, swell, I got that part, I understand the argument, now, show me the beef, I keep being shown the bun, but where's the beef?
ATI and nVidia *think* they might lose sales, they don't know that for a fact. They obviously believe that-I'll grant that-I just think they are scared and still locked into last century's business model and can't see the big picture cleanly or clearly enough (**AA's as well for that matter). i.e.; they just "don't get it" with open source, completely fail to see that the advantages outweigh the perceived "dangers" by a huge margin.
I assert, which is an opinion and not data, which-ever one-right now, today-went to pure open source would actually pull far ahead of the other in a relatively short time span. That's easy enough to grok. That the combination of good hardware combined with greatly enhanced enthusiasm from a LOT more coders wanting to help make their cards better on the software side would magnify as a force multiplier their own in-house coders efforts and result in even higher sales. That's my posit.
OK, we shouldn't confuse theoretical assumptions with hard data, yes? We can agree on that point? OK then, we need some examples to prove their's-and your's- point. Go ahead, be my guest!
I need to see some examples of where a hardware vendor, previously using closed source only, went to open source and lost significant sales because of the fact, and that the decision to go open source was the primary reason for the lost sales. That's the closest we could have to a real world example. I'll wait for some examples, and I will accept their validity if/when I can see some.
I am not aware of any, and nor do I know every single thing about all hardware business out there. I see a lot of counters to that though. I *have* seen that places like IBM have really gone out to try and incorporate more and more open source and it certainly hasn't hurt their hardware sales any, and they are significantly larger than either video card maker and in a competetive and similar market - "computer hardware". I have seen examples like FF pull completely away from what MS has in the browser arena. And so on. This is an oft discussed theme here, there are a lot of examples showing that open sourcing is being adopted more and more by more companies, and they all seem to mostly like it, they start seeing benefits and improvements. It is not the predominat case yet, I will grant that as well, but it is growing fast. Are all these innovators wrong? Are they lying? I don't know, I can only go on what I read and see and experience.
Really, show me an example someplace to make your
assertion of a higher probability of "lost sales due to open sourcing the code". If it is so probable, surely there must be a plethora-even just one real good one- of examples out there to use as references to affirm the counter.
I'll wait. Take your time, no rush.
We sure as heck have long ago needed an oil BUYERS cartel, were we make an offer to the oil companies and not be stuck at the "pay us what we demand you stupid suckers" level. If the oil companies can form a SALES cartel, we could have-on a national or even regional level-an oil PURCHASERS cartel. Their oil is pretty much useless to them without people buying it and handing them some cash. The larger our purchasers cartel, the better we would be in a pricing negotiation scenario with them.
Transportation fuel is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity for modern life, whether you "personally" drive a car or not, you are still relying on it. As such, pricing needs to be either regulated with outside caps, or, we can form giant buyers cartels to level this market playing field a little better.
In fact, you have strayed into the compounded strawman argument fused with completely false assumptions, and gone from there somehow conviced that is "fact".
Google WOULDN'T EXIST without open source. They wouldn't have a single dollar. There would not be a google as you see it now. That they only open some of their stuff means even there they still don't fully "get it", yet, besides that, they still managed to garner huge market share, PRECISELY BECAUSE OPEN SOURCE CODE WAS THERE FOR THEM TO USE. They kicked the shit out of MSN precisely because they came in on open source and that is the primary advantage they had.
You also make some utterly and arrogantly *lame* assumption (getting to be a habit with you, you might want to get that checked at the shrinks) that the open source community doesn't have MIT grads or EEs or Phds working in it. OMG OUR COMPANY HAS REAL SMART GUYS!!! NOBODY ELSE DOES THAT MAKES US THE BESTUS AUTOMAGICALLY!!ONE
Ya, SO WHAT? You lose,you lose BIG TIME right there, demonstrably false directly on this board, there are TONS of high level superior brains working on open source code, you can see that readily.
Now, back to a video card, PROVE that their hardware wouldn't get better with major contributions from the community, and come in faster than what the "closed source" community would provide for "the other brand". Prove it, that's your claim, so prove with some real world examples, give us the list of other type hardware vendors who lost major sales because their hardware runs on open source code. Give us THE BIG LIST, where is it? Can you point to serious LOST SALES?
Try again, PROVE some hardware vendor lost a sale-that's you ENTIRE POINT, LOST SALES OR NO SALE BASED ON OPEN SOURCE DRIVERS, because the hardware was running on open source and the competition wasn't, or could run on open source just as well as closed source and that open source was readily available. Give an example of lost sales, go ahead.
I like nvidia cards, I purchased a what to me was an expensive video card. Not top of the line, I can only afford a couple of generations back, but certainly good enough for my purposes now. If nvidia had a truly open source driver, does that mean automatically I would NOT buy a card from them because of that, that I would just flee overnight to ATI because for some reason they just "must" be better now? Any "advantage' that ATI might have would STILL BE IN THE NVIDIA CARD DRIVER, now wouldn't it?
This is why you don't get it on open source, you flat out refuse to see this, you think by opening the code you are THROWING IT AWAY, you AREN'T, you STILL GET TO KEEP IT, no one has "stolen" anything from you. You are selling VIDEO CARDS, that's where the cash comes from. And you get the code first while you are working on it, so how does that change things with 'the competiton" again? they don't see it until you dump it on the market, you have a huge lead time then, and after that, you STILL have lead time because something as important as that WILL get serious major effort donated to it, because it is in the USERS-your customers-best interest now, even MORESO than previously. They now have a stake in your business to make sure it stays working correctly and makes good stuff, so not only do you still get the cash for the cards, you get fre help to make the cards better.
I am just an average typical user, but we'll let some others chime in here, maybe someone in charge of purchasing a lot of desktops for their business, now would anyone "you" reading this NOT BUY A VIDEO CARD for those machines if there was a very good open source driver for it, direct from the devs at the manufacturer, with fully open contributions from the open source community? Or would you insist on the closed competition card?
This is a yes/no proposition, all things elsewhere take it as a near level playing field and considered, the hypothetical machines need video cards of some good qulity.
If yes, OK- that is understood, if the answer is NO, you WOULD NOT PURCHASE THOSE CARDS, why wouldn't you?
*snort*! heh
Pretty much already done did that. I don't get any new media discs,well, a very few, I restrict my purchases now to used primarily or the severely marked down bargain bins, and those are around maybe 4 units per annum I give my GF as cheap gifts (she likes movies way more than I do). I only watch a very few selected shows on TV, and even those most irregularly, primarily I catch the local weather, and watch a few selected olympic sports when they come around and an occassional nature special or news special. In other words, not enough commercials exposure to matter really. Maybe catch around 4 movies a year on tape, usually just rainy day watch something I already have. Music-meh, stopped going to concerts around the time ticket prices were headed towards ten bucks a show, which will really date me now. Recorded music, about the same as vids now, maybe half a dozen a year used CDs, a little OTA fm music in the car. Downloads-zero, either vids or music, none. I read news and opinion on the net, and the rest of the time my "culture" consists of being outside and doing outside stuff, either working or playing around with my hobbies.
I am more concerned over the political ramifications of locked down hardware and software. I don't like them taking away the gadgeteer's factor, the tinkerer's drive, making being curious and innovative a *crime*. trashing your "fair use" as a regular joe to take a wrench to your machine and make it "yours". I don't code myself but I totally "get" what drives open source coders, and agree with it. I build my own systems from normal parts, and I am not looking forward to having to jump through engineering hoops to maintain parity with whatever "openness" we have in hardware now, and be looking over my shoulder the whole time. I don't like the fact that big media and big news is falling into fewer and fewer hands, and that government is now in the stealth news business as official..well, brainwashing is the word, as official brainwashing policy.
And so on. Even though an individual may be able to counter this or that threat to his freedom through personal leet skills, we all have to work together, pool resources, be relentless, and try to respect and help the other guy maintain HIS freedoms as well. We will either all win or all lose in this game, so it is better, IMO, to always fall on the side of openness and freedom. If that changes some "business models" in society, I don't care, society still marches on, and some business models might be needing some changing anyway. There is no "right" to perpetual profits at the expense of other's freedoms, and limiting technological advances to only certain very wealthy segments of society who can control the actual law making process or who set up cartels to force you into accepting what you know is counterproductive for the advancement of Humans is..well, it's just not very cool. "Treacherous Computing" is very well named in this respect. Just say NO.
It looks more like they are planning some craptacular (via a scam chip buried someplace in the machine) way to make it impossible to view their (someone "their's") expensive "intellectual property" unless it is in the approved format of the week. Crack one level, you still have to view it, only to meet the new craptacular connection and monitor, tough noogies again. Call it defense of profits in depth, hard wired. Hit 'em in the hardware, hit 'em in the software, double nail them with laws, eventually they have 99% of the people buffaloed into economic submission..
Of course, that is a real wild guess....I am just a skeptic by nature when it comes to this sort of thing - "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 7,963 times, shame on me" deal.. "New and Improved" - from big industry sources, most always translates as "a new conjob they have come up with and an improved way to keep sucking dollars out of your wallet"
Way back before teh intarweb, I was working in a factory and really *needed* a raise, I just couldn't cut my bills with what I was getting. I liked my job OK, just needed around another half a buck an hour or so (which was significant then). I found a job listing in the paper at a rival factory, similar job to what I was doing. I left the news paper classifieds opened to that page on my workbench and took a long lunch hour, like an hour and a half. I never applied for the other job,just went and ate lunch, but when I got back the foreman was waiting for me and I got took to the office, where I got my raise. I had already made a request previously and gotten shut down.
Yep, a calculated risk, could have gotten fired, etc. At that point, I didn't care, either way I was not getting enough loot, plain and simple, it was either get the raise or go seriously looking around anyway, so I thought I would try silly melodrama and it worked.
Today,though, I don't think I would do that, I would make dang sure I had another job before borking the current one, the job climate is not the same today and all the cost of living factors are so much higher (relative AND bar knapkin figures adjusted for inflation).
So, what is wrong with using a code name on job applications, at least the web facing ones? You could at least have the first level of anonymity that way for your resume.
Simply Mepis has vids, courtesy of Roblimo and his "point and click linux" book. You get the Mepis OS, a DVD video disk and a dead trees manual. A noob kit in other words. About as noob friendly as possible, you can be watching the vid he made on the TV and doing stuff on the computer, just follow along with it.
Same here, I completely ignore the media check part now. I installed fine when they said the ISOs were bad (note: haven't gone to 5, I skip every other fedora release now, once a year is way more than enough). I don't trust the media checker thingee.
It is called the rigid bag container, or briefcase. A briefcase with additional clip on adjustable shoulder strap for really long walks perhaps. A briefcase is nice and stout, locks, it is "professional business acceptable" looking, is a nice flat surface for a handy portable "table" to set things on, and certainly has enough room for what you are looking to carry. 15$ for a good sized one at most *mart brand department stores, plain jane aluminum. Spend what you want after that I suppose, virgin lizard leather interior or whatever.... here's a thought, knowing how you like neat stuff, you can always measure it and find a nice solar panel that fits that you could screw to the outside of the side that faces "out" when you are carrying it, probably the "top" of the case when you set it down. Drill a hole and snake in the connector, be trickle charging some gadget as you travel around. I have several small ones sort of that size, none of them are all that heavy. The unisolar flexi panels I have are the lightest. In fact, there's a product right there (might exist but I haven't looked either), a briefcase where the sides *are* solar panels to begin with, those are the sides, just find an existing one that has good frames, use two obviously, what the heck, a nifty "power black" color is an added "high tech geek fashion" bonus. elegant, yet practical...
Both type efforts (archaeology and minerals/oil location) are benefiting from satellite remote sensing. We just recently had the lost city in guatemala found, the huge impact craters in the sahara, etc from satellite analysis (radar/photo). The impact craters were also helped by web based universal access, google maps helped amateur researchers there.
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As to the bosnian pyramid, it has long been known/suspected there in the locals handed down oral histories. It was more accurately RE-discovered. Just like when western scientists "discover" some new animal the locals have been *eating* forever and have names for.
There's another interesting development off the coast of cuba, an alleged underwater city.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/0
similar off of japan
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2004/s11072
(I am sure there are better links for those stories)
It's an interesting topic. A lot of oral and written tradition from around the world all relate a period in history with a "great flood". It will be nice if modern tech helps us discover what really happened and add to our knowledge of the real "olden days", whichever way it shakes out.
Maybe by changing your greeting you can help speed things up. I'll add the inflection and tonals
"Hello (higher and faster than normal,because you stretch it out very slightly, end the O Long "Hellll-O), you are speaking to the computer help desk (this is lower pitched and slower, just slightly, with an exact matching linear cadence on the syllables, they are all equal), this is Matt (emphasis on "this"), how may I help you with your problem?(how is treated like the first "hello", end the "you" a little louder, notmuch, just a little 'in soviet russia...YOU'..."
This is psychology and salesmanship, and double reinforces to the customer the primary thing that is going on, they aren't calling *Matt*, they are calling *the help desk and they are annoyed with voodoo that has nailed them*. It's just a slight wordage variation with the addition of just a few more words and paying attention to how it sounds, but it amplifies the initial interaction so that both parties can get quickly to the point. Also remember, you are a sales person, even if you aren't selling anything tangible per se, you are immediately in a customer/sales position. You are "selling" a service that your "customer" never even wanted to be forced to buy in the first place, so it's a "tough sell", your customer IS approaching you with a negative based mindset, ie, they already have a problem which has annoyed them to some level, so you have to be extremely delicate and precise, but control the situation and your only tools are language and psychology.
Right off the bat they will need to be defused down from their anger (whatever level that anger is at, it *is* there), and they have to be re-assured that this will "work", that by the end of the conversation they will be a happy camper-and you have made a "sale", you have "closed". Tone of voice is very important as well, it makes a big difference. You need to sound enthused, happy, and *very* confident. You only have two sentences total in the beginning to establish the mood and probable outcome of the call, no matter the problem.
Anyway, fool around with it, try some experiments, it's amazing what slight variations can do to help out.
Yes, that is the proper way to go about it. For the long term anyway, although I am sure initially they all resisted it, but perhaps not given a different social climate in Norway from the US. Here, manufacturers have been very slow to take back stuff, even something as useful as aluminum beverage cans has created controversy when they put a nickel deposit on them to make sure they got recycled insted of dumped.
I'll give you a prime example of how screwed up this is. In my area, rural, the local city government were I live doesn't have free trash pickup, nor recycling. Instead what they do is charge you so much a lb to go to the dump. The result is the ditches on the sides of the road are knee deep in trash and garbage. It's stupid and disgusting, and obvious why it happens. If all the manufacturers had to take back their used stuff and the packaging, etc,(or they subbed it out to companies dedicated to that) so that when you went to the store you could take the selected chunks of trash and dispose of them properly, it would work, after a short readjustment period. Especially if you got paid a small token to bring the stuff in, I would bet most stuff would get recycled then.
Marketing is both an art and a science, but it isn't perfect, and it constantly changes. I just think (and I know I am not alone, you can see other folks saying similar on prices) that current prices are too high and haven't dropped with tech advances like they should and could. Before iTunes, they REALLY resisted 99cent songs as single downloads, they didn't think it would work and be too cheap, etc.. The marketers gotten proven pretty wrong on that. I am only just me, but I USED to be a big consumer of media, but almost stopped from the price gouging. I buy a few disks a year, that's it. I remember with every paycheck I went and bought some vinyl, and also hit the concerts fairly often. Now, about zip for either. Not worth it, too expensive. the reason why renting VHS tapes took off was precisely for price reasons,. at the time all you could get was very expensive tapes,so most people opted for a few bucks rental over 30-40-50 bucks purchase. Eventually they dropped tape prices down as tech advanced, but then they hit a plateau and plastic optical disks came around, BINGO, a REAL cheap way to make copies. so where's the price drop?? Not seeing it. the players/readers dropped in price immensely, tech marches on, why are the copies still high? I maintain gouging, and their marketrs just 'report" what the bigshots want to hear anyway. that's a guess but bet I am right on that. Now they have the tech to actually SELL the disks at the previous rental price for tapes. And the cost of stamping and shipping is MUCH lower than making and shippong tapes. Ball is in their court now, drop prices, they will see the same thing that happened with itunes and with tape rentals, the sweet spot is NOT 20$. Maybe for the top 5% income earners it is plenty cheap enough, but everyone else buys much less than what they might be inclined to. People won't want to pirate much at all once they can get what they want cheap enough and legal enough.There has to be a middle ground here someplace, they just can't claim with a straight face that todays copy tech is even close to being as expensive as it was ten years ago, but that is the price range they are stuck at. Does-not-compute except as delibarate gouging and industry PR obfuscation and FUD.
For the record I don't download either. I did one MP3 one time, a legit one off the bands site,and never any movies at all. I grab a few disks a year from yard sales or pawnshops or the bargain marked down bin, that's it, music or movies. The only way I have to vote with those folks is with my wallet and ranting on the net, so I have "voted"..
....a decent market share. A few good ones really. First, foremost and of utmost importance is hardware support, still in 2006 much less than perfect, especially for the average non guru. Computers today are a lot more than simple box with a cheap spreadsheet and word processor onboard, they have to do a variety of things and usually rely on additional outside hardware and things like newish video and sound cards, etc. you will have to admit, functionality there is less than perfect, BUT, if "Linux" had a much larger market share, the vendors would pony up with their offerings.
Second is cost due to aggravation, how many people have torn their hair out over getting their boxes pwned, been cootified, etc and have to take it to the fixit shop due to a near monopoly and bad coding? This is a real world, affects businesses, home owner level users, etc, up and down and sideways in the computing food chain, and it's mainly because the "market leader" has done such a bad job. We all get to pay for that though, even if we don't personally use their products, we are still affected by them in day to day living because so many others do. I'll call it the hidden expensive headache tax.
Another hidden cost-my taxes, your taxes, going in large part to buy single seat licenses by the millions probably for a variety of redmond brand products, a humongous real expense that is mostly unnecessary for the bulk of government useage.
A further advantage would be speed in computing advances. Basing our societal advances on what a single closed source lumbering giant company releases is..well, it is silly. Sorta lame really. Bad car analogy time. Would we be better off with one giant planetary car company, then just a few hobbiest cars on the side, like only a few percent? I sorta doubt it...
We need better alternatives and the alternatives have to be adopted (somehow) in such numbers as to be significant. Ya, we are nerds, and can "deal with it" and have fun, but we as nerds have a sort of duty to help out the rest of the planet with what we think up and make and do as well. It's not written in any sort of law, but I think we all have a little service to humanity deal going, and helping nudge along something better/cheaper/faster/freer is part of it. Or *should be*, call all of that just my opinion on it.
..a major vendor moves into offering a linux desktop in a big way, and I don't mean two models hidden back in their website that takes 10 clicks to find. When/if that happens, whichever distro they pick will start to become an industry standard. They *aren't* going to be picking any of the random hobbiest distros you see below the top 5 at distrowatch, that is a given, so I think folks who really want linux to suceed on the desktop need to take that into mind. Someone (a big hardware company) is going to crack first, my best guess is HP. But who knows there, just guessing at that one. IBM got out of the lower end market, so they are out (pity, I think they could have pulled it off) There IS a market for an easy to use, works outta the box, supreemly GUI intensive joe user linux desktop, if it existed. Right now there are several that are close, but not quite. And six month release schedules do NOT make a stable release. joe user is not even close to being interested in jumnping through that hoop, they want it pre installed and not have to fool around with it for a few years, until such a time comes as they want a new machine. I'd call it three years instead of 6 months, just do incremental security upgrades and make the dang thing work. We geeks don't care, but that leaves the other 99% of the population that does care, and don't want to be bothered with the complexity of brand new twice a year, said complexity that always seem to come with older stuff that worked before now broken and new stuff pushed as full release which is still betaware for most practical purposes. Now apple does it near yearly, but they have a slightly different market. I see linux fitting between windows and apple in that regard, on the desktop I mean.
...gives you a unique perspective and brings home reality over their BS they spew. I'm in a similar half a century + change personally screwed by those bozos. A couple of my pet peeves are them continuuing to muck about with gun rights after they promised the 68 act would be "it", no more after that, and later on with the huge illegals amnesty during the reagan years (I think, don't remember, 84??), then they said they would "crack down" and "enforce the laws on the books".
Oh ya, my all time *favorite* "random courtesy roadblocks". WTF is up with that?? Remember back in school we were taught only supremely evil and totalitarian bad places like east germany and whatnot had those sorts of roadblocks (Your papers please!) and how wrong and illegal it would be here?
Man, there's a bunch. You are right, people of a younger age don't have any frame of reference on some of these subjects outside of an academic one.
Now here's one I keep trying to maintain a frame of reference on, the great depression. It's hard, but I try, I keep it in the back of my mind when I look at economic news andd geopolitical events. I wasn't around then, but my parents and aunts and uncles, etc, were, and I distinctly remember the stories they told me about it and how amazingly fast things can change and how utterly bogus the stock market/government currency manipulators are when it comes to hosing the population with their congames. Keep promising them just this huge something for nothing deal until they are all sucked in, then WHAMO, drop the hammer and walk off with all the REAL wealth leaving the peons holding the bag with worthless paper. Seems they pull this stunt on a big scale every other generation or something, because it takes that long for people to "forget" those "leaders" main skill set is *lying*. They are professional grifters.
the same marketing guys who told them VHS tapes would sell for over 50$? them guys? I don't have the stats handy, but I bet once they dropped to 20 or lower they sold a lot more and made "more net profit" on them. I know at the first release prices I bought zero, but after that I bought a lot, but when they stopped dropping pricesw, and especially with DVDs maintaining the same margins for years and no price drops, I buy very few of them.
You can see similar sentiment from other people on these movies and piracy threads, people know what it costs, they know when they are getting gouged or not, so they react accordingly. The movie guys know that too, that is in the article itself,look up, check it out, so you can argue with them and tell them they are wrong. I am *agreeing* with them, I just wish they would drag the same idea to the US, because tech advances are way past the time they could have had severe price drops on pre recorded media. they are trying to maintain price levels established years and years ago now, time for the "tech makes things a lot cheaper" to hit the retail shelves. While their movies have held steady at around 20$, the players have dropped from 300$ to 30$ in the same time frame. This is called a "clue". Stuff on a disc is mass manufactured cheap stuff, they could still make a ton of loot and keep their customers beyond happy and sell a LOT more than what they do now by simply dropping prices down to a more reasonable level. EXACTLY the same as in every other business out there. If there were no tech advances, and there was no way for them to make the discs cheaper, than I would agree, "marketing" would be right on, but that isn't the case, it *is* much cheaper for them to make them over the past 5 years or so, so marketing is just telling their bosses what they want to hear. And the bosses make the decision, and the bosses are all multimillionaires who to them 20 bucks is change spilled on the floor, they *think* it's as close to free as you can get, it's what they leave for a tip at a cheap breakfast someplace. they don't relate to working stiffs. they live in places like Hollywood with those insanely high prices for everything, they don't actually grok how the rest of the nation outside of aa handful of large urban areas live or what people make or what stuff costs. Then they wonder why sales are dropping.
This is duh time.
EXCEPT in china, in the article, THERE they "get it" and know if they don't drop prices they will hardly sell any legitimately.
this is true, but it wasn't my point. they have a huge disconnect on what that stuff is worth, and IF they were selling enough, they wouldn't be complaining about the piracy, because at a cheap enough point, a lot more people would be buying the discs. that was the whole point of the article, they DO recognize that at the prices they are charging legitimately now (in china) most people don't care and go buy the "pirate" copies instead.
I know I can go into walmart and get any number of older movies for $5 or even less sometimes, so I know it's possible for them to sell movies on DVDs for much less than what they charge now. Volume sales works.
These are the same companies when VHS tapes first came out tried to get 60-70 dollars for a tape, because their "marketing" told them that is what people would purchase them for. They sold some, but not that many at that price point. That more or less failed except for the video rental business, because they could sell them over and over again.That loss to the video rental stores which took off forced them to reconsider their outright sale price. Once they dropped their prices down severely, they sold a *lot more due to volume sales pricing* and it became profitable for them. Maybe not as high per tape, but they sold a ton more tapes and it became common for people to start building home libraries of them. And no way (today) is stamping a DVD costing more than making a complex tape and shipping it around, DVDs should be much cheaper than they are now new, same with music CDs, and I predict they will be dropping prices sometime to reflect that.
..but you can get some pretty cheap tractors from China now if you are willing to spend a couple weekends re-assembling them. They are called "crate tractors" and are shipped partially disassembled packed in a wooden crate. For less than 6 grand you can get approx 15 grand worth of compact diesel tractor.
The DVDs here, heck ya they could sell them a lot cheaper and still make a profit. Volume sales. At $20 I buy none, same at $15. Drop that to $5 I buy a few, $3 for bits on a plastic disk (let alone the $1.50 figure in the article), and I would buy a lot. The movie and music moguls at the top who make the final decision on what a "good" retail sales figure are can't see this sort of situation applies to a considerable amount of the population, they are universally multi millionaires and think $20 is dirt cheap already. $20 to them is like 50 cents or a quarter (whatever) to "normal" people.
Amish kids are allowed a year to go out into the world and go hog wild, use high tech, wear colorful clothes, yada yada, all the stuff they don't do back at the ranch.. This is to show them that going back to the simpler ways is actually better, and most choose to go back. Not all, but most.
Hey, looked it up, here is the more detailed wikipedia entry for it, this deal with the kids has a name, "rumspringa"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa
As to tech, they can and do *slowly* adopt new tech. Every step is debated in their councils. Just hit the generic wikipedia entry for amish to read about them.
..I'd sure invest as in reasonable cash money into an OS and applications desktop-oriented distro that upfront prominently said that their main purpose was NOT new eye candy but secure bug-free as possible code, and that part of what I was paying for was constant overlapping audits. That concept - run through the appropriate marketing speak translator - might help sell an open source distro in the general market place.
BAD CAR ANALOGY TIME
I can see the TV commercial, new shiny whizzbang motors latest release! Mega fins and wings, curb feelers, 29 channel surround holovision, purple paint with flames and giant rims with triple reverse spinners! Plus, its an SUV *and* an economy car, at the same time! Or so says the advert....
Dude goes to drive it off the carlot after buying it, heads out to the "information superduperhighway" the road sign says, he gets two flats immediately,an oil slick under the car appears, a couple of wheels fall off,the hood pops open, magic smoke release, bad guys jump out of the side of the road and mug him, take his wallet and credit cards,and etc.
Cut to the next scene, a normal looking solid car, smiling driver, driving right past the gas station and not pulling in, right past the carlot where the previous guy just got his new whizzbang, right past where he is broke down on the road and got robbed, now there's a cop car there with the blue lights..... keeps driving, gets out at home, walks into his normal looking house..fade back to the driveway...the camera zooms in to the odometer on the dash, it reads 2,678,000 miles on it.....
Announcer in the background goes..."Now really, which would you rather drive?"
that is pretty spiffy! I bookmarked that link to their product page, and 99 bucks doesn't seem all that unreasonable if it is as comfortable as they say (or it looks). Keyboard and mouse takes three hands! nuts! It's always seemed 'tarded to me that way... And I have tried trackpad keyboards, don't like them, something like this, though, where you can sit back in a comfy chair and surf and type looks pretty neat.
...until software comes with some sort of normal consumer warranty "suitable for purpose" "works as advertised" and etc.
Until then, most EULAs are just variations on claiming it won't work as advertised most likely and really isn't suited for the purpose at hand, but you can try it anyway.. They should just cut to the chase and do a one liner - "you are a sucker and retard if you accept this magic beans accumulation and expect it to work, now, gimme my candy!"
It would about have to come from a voice interface then. One that worked. A bluetooth or wired headset and just...talk to the machine. Then it could be small.
I so much agree on the tiny, I detest having to go get new cell phones, it has gotten to the point I can barely use them they have gotten so small. All this new really small stuff is designed with young humans with tiny fingers and great eyes in mind it appears. It doesn't matter how tiny the device is if you just can't use the thing, doesn't matter how many features it has if you can't see the screen or manipulate the buttons.
Note to hardware companies-look around the western world, the population with a lot of disposable income is neither real young nor do they have great eyes. Stiff fingers/arthritis and bifocals are *common*. You want those folks business, keep that in mind when you are designing stuff. These companies are telling folks who think nothing of dropping 100 grand on an RV that their market segment isn't worth releasing products designed with them in mind. Pretty much a huge missed business opportunity there near as I can see..with my bifocals. Keep saying FU to that market and it will reply in kind. Cater to it, you *might* get some bizznezz...