"That's what wins in the long term. It's not raw freedom and choice, it's making intelligent choices and then sticking with them."
And how do you plan on makng inteligent choices without 'raw freedom and choice'? The only point that I can take from your post is that lack of choice is (badly) a replacement for good management. Well, that is a nice point, but it doesn't seem you where trying to make it.
Well, people think quantum mechanics are flawed behond repair since before it come to be. Just remember that Plank after proposing that light is quantized spent most of he's career fighting that same idea.
Quantum mechanics is not intuitive, but it pass every test we make with it. It's explaining things for the best part of a cetury now*, always proposing weard things, and aways getting it right. It's hard to replace a theory that works that well.
* More than a century if you count since Plank, not Schrödinger.
The patent of a "four weeled vehicle with engine" would be denied, just because it doesn't explain what sort of verhicle it is. The (very insightfull) gear that transmit power from the engine to a pair of weels while permiting them to have different velocities (and made a 4 weeled vehicle possible) was patented, and rightly so.
See, generic patent that applies to anything at the horizon despite the actual technology used -> denied. Specific patent that applies to well defined piece of technology -> granted. That's the way it was, and that is what doesn't happen with software patents.
And, by the way, everybody was after a four weeled vehicle by that time, but nobody had the means of building one. What do you think would happen if somebody was able to patent a "four weeled vehicle with engine" before the diferential gear was created? Do you think it would be developed?
It's more like: "Our O(1) algorithm gives the optimum performance we tried so much to achieve. But when we made it, we discovered that we were persuing the wrong goal."
"The problem with games and Linux is that if a game runs in linux, it can be trivially copied to another machine (blame the geeks) so copy protection and all that does not work at all."
What, are they supposed to be hard to copy?!? I'll thell that to the people that sells pirate games around here.
I'd disagree on not using the screen width (I can resize* my windows, you know), but at least you measured your space owith 'em'. I can't really handle people that sets maxwidth (or even worse, the placement of text) with pixels.
* In fact, I didn't notice that before, but my first reaction to full screen text is to increase the font size. I don't do that when there is a left menu. I still like full width + big fonts better.
Last time I saw it, ODF was not controled by SUN. It was an international standard, created by several companies and other kinds of entities.
Now, it's SUN pushing for ODF there... And so what? If it was Microsoft pushing for an open standard wouldn't it be as good? (Of course MS won't do that).
And, maybe ODF has its flaws (I don't know, I don't like OOo a lot, but don't know the format that well). But it's a well docummented, short, simple and formal standard. If we get something better later, we can just convert our documents.
Yes, I made that assumption. If the costs only increase to 1 player, this player will see its margins decrease or even get out of the market. He'll only be able to increase its prices if there is product differentiation (that is where theory fails, there is always some diferentiation, even for commodities) or if he plays an important role on maintaining the concurrency.
We call that a 'inelastic' demand. Note that it will react to price increases, but it takes huge increses to compensate a small supply difference.
On the case of energy, if it is expensive enough people will freeze, but won't be able to buy it. That's sad, but the model works. The point is not to tell nice things, but to be able to predict what will happen.
It's clearly not the case here, but your model doesn't work on competitive markets.
If there is a competition, the market price is normaly established by the sellers (trying to outbid themselves), not the buyers. So, if the cost increase, all sellers tendo to increase their price, and the customer normaly sees a price increase that is even bigger than the costs increase. With time the price comes back to the expected (original price + cost increase).
"What people argue is that the free market is "good enough," and is a system that is so complex and quick to react, that any attempt to regulate it for its own good should be looked at long and hard -- simply because it's so difficult to do better without detrimental ramifications, even with the best of intentions."
In other words: "La la la la. I'm not hearing you". We've already saw how the free market behaves, and didn't like it. The deployed solution was regulation, and that made the situation better, but created a lot of problems itself. Can you put any other alternative on the table?
And imperfect information IS a problem. You enter a deal if you THINK you'll be better after than before it. What you think will happen doesn't have to resemble what will really happen, they just are the same thing if you have perfect information.
That can only work if the goods you sell have a value. If the US start selling just IP and tries to use the WTO to enforce its value you'll see all countries abandoning WTO, one by one (we are not far from that now), or the US banished.
You'd better wake-up because no big country can survive selling (ok, renting) intelctual property. No one.
If you didn't notice yet, China has copyright laws because THEIR gorvernment choosed to have. And they choosed to have IP because they think it would benefit THEMSELVES. If it somehow stop benefiting themselves (like it becoming huge imports, but very small exports), chinese governemnt can simply not enforce IP anymore, or enforce it in a more benefical way (like only recognizing their people's IP).
Now, you'd better sell some real goods if you want to keep being a partner at international trade. Or produce valuable IP, like useful patents, so you can buy some time.
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And how do you plan on makng inteligent choices without 'raw freedom and choice'? The only point that I can take from your post is that lack of choice is (badly) a replacement for good management. Well, that is a nice point, but it doesn't seem you where trying to make it.
Who mods thise things up?
Linux 5 years ago was not even near usefull for a average Joe. If XP sucked by that time, people would use it anyway, or upgrade their 98 to 2000.
Linux only started to be competitive on the last 3 years (nice thing that vista should be already on the market by then).
Well, people think quantum mechanics are flawed behond repair since before it come to be. Just remember that Plank after proposing that light is quantized spent most of he's career fighting that same idea.
Quantum mechanics is not intuitive, but it pass every test we make with it. It's explaining things for the best part of a cetury now*, always proposing weard things, and aways getting it right. It's hard to replace a theory that works that well.
* More than a century if you count since Plank, not Schrödinger.
The patent of a "four weeled vehicle with engine" would be denied, just because it doesn't explain what sort of verhicle it is. The (very insightfull) gear that transmit power from the engine to a pair of weels while permiting them to have different velocities (and made a 4 weeled vehicle possible) was patented, and rightly so.
See, generic patent that applies to anything at the horizon despite the actual technology used -> denied. Specific patent that applies to well defined piece of technology -> granted. That's the way it was, and that is what doesn't happen with software patents.
And, by the way, everybody was after a four weeled vehicle by that time, but nobody had the means of building one. What do you think would happen if somebody was able to patent a "four weeled vehicle with engine" before the diferential gear was created? Do you think it would be developed?
You probably didn't RTFA... Its point is exactly that those fenomena may not happen by chance, but be strictly periodic.
I don't remember Microsoft gouing back and start licensing 98 again after they released XP and discontinued 98.
It's more like: "Our O(1) algorithm gives the optimum performance we tried so much to achieve. But when we made it, we discovered that we were persuing the wrong goal."
It will be even better for us if that deal is just for Dell. That way, other OEM will need to inovate (yep, only possible with Linux) to stay alive.
What, are they supposed to be hard to copy?!? I'll thell that to the people that sells pirate games around here.
Just to add something, remember at 2006 that Microsoft said Vista wouldn't be ready on time? Its stock lost 20% of its value on 3 days.
I'd disagree on not using the screen width (I can resize* my windows, you know), but at least you measured your space owith 'em'. I can't really handle people that sets maxwidth (or even worse, the placement of text) with pixels.
* In fact, I didn't notice that before, but my first reaction to full screen text is to increase the font size. I don't do that when there is a left menu. I still like full width + big fonts better.
And don't forget that some buggy software, like Firefox and some Subversion clients put hidden files at places that aren't your home dir too.
Last time I saw it, ODF was not controled by SUN. It was an international standard, created by several companies and other kinds of entities.
Now, it's SUN pushing for ODF there... And so what? If it was Microsoft pushing for an open standard wouldn't it be as good? (Of course MS won't do that).
And, maybe ODF has its flaws (I don't know, I don't like OOo a lot, but don't know the format that well). But it's a well docummented, short, simple and formal standard. If we get something better later, we can just convert our documents.
Yes, I made that assumption. If the costs only increase to 1 player, this player will see its margins decrease or even get out of the market. He'll only be able to increase its prices if there is product differentiation (that is where theory fails, there is always some diferentiation, even for commodities) or if he plays an important role on maintaining the concurrency.
We call that a 'inelastic' demand. Note that it will react to price increases, but it takes huge increses to compensate a small supply difference.
On the case of energy, if it is expensive enough people will freeze, but won't be able to buy it. That's sad, but the model works. The point is not to tell nice things, but to be able to predict what will happen.
It's clearly not the case here, but your model doesn't work on competitive markets.
If there is a competition, the market price is normaly established by the sellers (trying to outbid themselves), not the buyers. So, if the cost increase, all sellers tendo to increase their price, and the customer normaly sees a price increase that is even bigger than the costs increase. With time the price comes back to the expected (original price + cost increase).
In other words: "La la la la. I'm not hearing you". We've already saw how the free market behaves, and didn't like it. The deployed solution was regulation, and that made the situation better, but created a lot of problems itself. Can you put any other alternative on the table?
And imperfect information IS a problem. You enter a deal if you THINK you'll be better after than before it. What you think will happen doesn't have to resemble what will really happen, they just are the same thing if you have perfect information.
Yet, the second group still needs backups. And I doubt they do it.
Lets not forget all the FUD MS intentionaly spread trough the press, as say some recently disclosed documents.
That can only work if the goods you sell have a value. If the US start selling just IP and tries to use the WTO to enforce its value you'll see all countries abandoning WTO, one by one (we are not far from that now), or the US banished.
You can install both at the same computer if you run Linux. Take a look at WineTools.
You'd better wake-up because no big country can survive selling (ok, renting) intelctual property. No one.
If you didn't notice yet, China has copyright laws because THEIR gorvernment choosed to have. And they choosed to have IP because they think it would benefit THEMSELVES. If it somehow stop benefiting themselves (like it becoming huge imports, but very small exports), chinese governemnt can simply not enforce IP anymore, or enforce it in a more benefical way (like only recognizing their people's IP).
Now, you'd better sell some real goods if you want to keep being a partner at international trade. Or produce valuable IP, like useful patents, so you can buy some time.
Until now MS is winning at the brazilian government. There is some movement into the alternatives, but most fail (because of people inertia mainly).
That is, unless you also count brazilian public universities. MS is loosing those very fast, and, because of this, there is hope.
That stuff KILLS!!!!!!
But is an excelent fire deterrent...