nobody disputes that locking your customers in is profitable for you, if you can get it.
Hmmm... I think at least one guy who replied to my post seemed to think that. The few exceptions are invariably the result of historical accidents, once-on-a-time windows of opportunity and even then tend to erode rather quickly.
The most successful software company in the world has extreme lock-in - it's called a virtual monopoly. Okay, maybe that's the result of a historical accident, but lock-in on a smaller scale happens all the time. Networking equipment suppliers make a lot of money on services and support (it's the open source dream). But the reason they can do it is because they have a monopoly on improvements to their product.
I once sat in on a sales pitch from some embedded Linux company. They sent out 3 salesmen to meet us (at god knows what expense), and then they want to charge us some outrageous price for a support contract just because they once submitted a few patches to the kernel. We told them to bugger off.
I've also witnessed a few sales pitches from the makers of specialize network test equipment like Ixia and Smartbits. That stuff is also expensive as hell, but what are you going to do? There's no cheap alternative, and the hardware + software comes as a bundle. So what are you going to do? We ended up (reluctantly) buying some of it at the outrageous price.
These days, it's impossible for a small company to provide a complete solution on their own. If you consider the end product to be a fully configured server, then probably at least 90% of the code was written by someone else (99% if you include the OS & toolchain).
So when you're a small company, you don't have much leverage with the 10% of the solution that you can provide. Anyone could come in and replace you, especially if your work is all open source. Smart investors know that's it's often better not to invest in the pioneers, but rather in the well-funded players who jump in right after a new technology has matured.
In order to make yourself invaluable, you need to grow so you can provide a complete solution. But to grow you need funding, and to get funding you need IP. So it's a chain reaction, but there's a reason why it happens.
Yeah, sure... lock-in is good for users and bad for vendors. All I'm saying is that lock-in is an essential part of doing business and it's not going away any time soon.
The net result of OSS preventing lock-in is that a) companies that try to commercialize OSS will continue to fail, b) non-OSS companies will become more unscrupulous, and c) OSS companies will try to re-invent their own type of lock-in.
But when your customers don't want lock in, then not having any is a marketable advantage.
Sure... marketing that you don't have lock-in may be an advantage, but that doesn't mean that actually doing it is an advantage.
A smart, successfull investor sees that most businesses are dependent on lock in, and that it pisses customers off, so in 5 years, the successful new businesses will be the ones without lock in, and invest now accordingly.
Giving your customers exactly what they want has never made good business sense either. Typically, the customer wants every feature under the sun for the lowest price possible. The unsuccessul companies just cave in to every demand. The succesful ones charge the maximum price that the market will bear and spend the minimum time possible on technical support. (They don't route your phone call to India just for a lark.)
Heh... yeah actually a couple of weeks ago I went to download.com to look for a specific type of app I wanted (database for tracking golf scores). Pretty much everything I found was crippleware for $25. Not that I would mind spending it, mind you, but none of the programs could do exactly what I wanted, except for one which was incredibly buggy and half-assed. I ended up writing it myself - I guess that's the ultimate in avoiding lock in.:-)
Unfortunately, the presumption of that lock-in period is what justifies a company's initial startup costs. Without it, it's nearly impossible to get VC funding.
The biggest mistake that/. readers make in their economic pundrity is thinking that everything ends when a company becomes profitable. But realistically, you're not successful until you've made back all the money from the initial investment plus 10% ROI to cover the opportunity cost. Plus, if the majority of companies will fail then the successful ones need to make twice as money in order to still give the investors a 10% average rate of return.
Let's face it: lock in is just smart business. Ignore it at your peril. If you're not always fighting to keep the customers that you have, then you're going to have a lot more time & money to spend on the ones you don't. If you found a company based on some idealistic notion that lock-in is bad, then you are going to fail just like any other two-bit company with no business sense.
Or taking it further, perhaps have it increment the bounty by $1 a day.
That's nice to say... but there's still the question of who is paying this money. Normally a bounty is created when a specific person pledges $X. You can't just postulate that the bounty should increase.
Debt is not bad if you put your capital to work. But RedHat was already underperforming the market with a $13M return on $391M of assets. When you consider that it's now a $13M return on $1.1B of assets, that's pretty dismal.
What are they going to do with this extra $600M? Are they going to triple their products next year? And the year after as well?
I looked up their annual report. As I mentioned, they used to have $300M in cash. Now they seem to have more than $900M.
But my point is this: their operating expenses are only $88k per year so far, and they are currently profitable. So how much debt do they really need? (They're not exactly delivering a spectacular ROE at the moment, so if they only make $13M next year then it will be a spectacular disappointment.)
The debt was convertible (meaning they can change the debt to stock). Dell has already converted it, if you look at Redhat's balance sheets they showed 600 mil in debt, and over the last 3 quarters that has almost all disappeared as the owners of the debt have converted the debt to stock.
How did RedHat get $600 mil in debt? Last I checked, they had almost $300 mil of cash in the bank and a negligible run rate.
There has been lots of hypothesis testing. One thing evolution predicted was animals with similar traits would have common dna fingerprints - a hypothesis that was given way before we could analyse DNA. There's been lots of hypotheses like that which should it is indeed falsiable.
Not only that, but the *differences* between related species have shown clear signs of a random process in action. So while at a macro level, natural selection is a non-random process, at a micro level it is effected by a series of random changes.
The frequency of random mutations is quantifiable, and thus falsifiable. Furthermore, it is pretty hard to argue for intelligent design, and at the same time also claim that the designer introduced random variations between species that just happen to fit the mutation signature of natural selection.
(Which is not to say that I haven't heard any creationists try to argue it.:-))
I remember it being used in an episode of CSI:Miami where a woman is pushed in front of a bus. They have security camera footage where the woman keeps looking behind her, but it's not in the frame. So they get the image from the reflection in some girl's eye.
Fantastic picture zooming predates computers. Columbo solved many a murder by zooming in on a crowd scene or a video to disover a tatoo, monogram, birthmark, etc.
Funny that you would choose Columbo when the seminal example is "Blow Up".
And it was followed by the John Travolta film "Blow Out", which does a similar thing for audio.
What's even funnier is when they zoom into the reflection of someone's eye and pull a clear picture out of that to catch a suspect from a regular security camera on CSI New York.
Maybe you should zoom out instead of zooming in...
It was CSI:Miami. IIRC, the episode where Wolf is first hired.
I tend to agree. Personally, I really don't care if I have to reboot my computer to install a video card driver, as long as it works the first time. Several of my most hellish computer experiences have been related to installing new video cards. I will easily take a reboot over a process that requires me to read some arcane HOWTOs and manually tweak my framebuffer settings.
> He also claims, also correctly, that the FSF > engages in price fixing by getting multiple > vendors to agree to give their products away > for free.
And here's where you're getting confused. Laws against price fixing exist not to allow other companies to compete, but to allow consumers to get the benefits of competition by prohibiting collusion of those already in the business.
See here's what's funny... I read on/. last week about how the government is corrupt and all the politicians are in the pockets of the lobbyists and all the laws are writen to favour big corporations.
Well put, but given that we are discussing Internet debate then it is probably quicker to identify poor reasoning than it is to reliably determine a poster's age.
Hmmm... IIRC this whole thread arose because many antecedent posts ago, you said that the anonymity of the Internet is a blessing, not a curse.
Well, in some ways it is a blessing because I can come online and satisfy my occasional need to debate people without fear of repercussions.
But as for ensuring the quality of the debate, I find it is a curse. Sure, I guess I will notice after awhile if I am debating with a 10 year old. But it is still nice to have the insta-filter.
Perhaps, but if your information is accurate and your logic and reasoning is valid, then what more powerful way is there to affect an issue than to shape the development of our youth?
Ahh... but isn't it much more rewarding to shape the development of your own child rather than some anonymous 10 year old on the internet?
I mean, if I could teach 100 kids with a single post then maybe... but doing it one by one is a long hard slog. As for (b) and (c), your typical 10 year old is not going to engage in such a discussion in the first place. Any 10 year old who does so is by definition exceptional.
I tend to disagree. Not being qualified to enter an argument has never stopped anyone before. Just ask any troll.
I have noticed that kids go through a series of intellectual stages as they mature. As they learn new things, they often become 100% convinced of them. But the next year, they may be 100% convinced of something else. (It's a bit like that scene in the bar from Good Will Hunting.)
I doubt that your average amateur thinker really has a fully-fleshed out view of the world until their mid twenties. They may not have expernce, but they can certainly adsorb and synthisize information and arguments on a specific subject far exceeding the actual experience of a random adult on an arbitrary subject. An exceptional child with an exceptional viewpoint may just make an exceptional point.
I really doubt that. Even if they do research something on the web, 10 year olds just don't have the necessary skills to think critically. If you tell them something new (be it right or wrong), they are just going to parrot it back to you later.
If they are so stupid then why can't they arguement fall over on its own merit? I dont see a problem with being mistaken while you argue with a 10 year old about politics thinking the 10 year old is really just a dumb adult.
10 year olds aren't necessarily stupid... just immature.
I guess it's a question of what you think the point of debating with someone is in the first place. I guess it's either:
a) to win the argument b) to learn something new c) to solidify your own knowledge of something by explaining it to someone else
Well:
a) Winning an argument against a 10 year old is fairly unsatisfying. They lack sufficient critical thinking skills to accept a complicated argument on its own merits. If you do convince them, it is probably not via sound logic.
b) 10 year olds are unlikely to be able to teach me something interesting that I don't already know. If they do, then it is probably not through debate.
c) The topic areas where I would like to be able to clarify my opinion in my own mind, are far beyond the knowledge of a typical 10 year old.
What a crock of shit! You are making a horrible generalization. How about "arguing with a libertarian is always a waste of time" or "arguing with a senior citizen is always a waste of time."
Fine, so it's a generalization. Nothing is really black and white. But when a generalization is true 98-99% of the time, I'm willing to call it a fact.
There are other classes of people with whom I consider debating a waste of time. E.g. religious nutcases, senior citizens with dementia. I know ten-year-olds who hold more intelligent opinions than many twenty-five year olds.
Fine... and those are probably some of the 25 year olds that I don't really want to talk with either.
Slashdot Mirror
nobody disputes that locking your customers in is profitable for you, if you can get it.
Hmmm... I think at least one guy who replied to my post seemed to think that.
The few exceptions are invariably the result of historical accidents, once-on-a-time windows of opportunity and even then tend to erode rather quickly.
The most successful software company in the world has extreme lock-in - it's called a virtual monopoly. Okay, maybe that's the result of a historical accident, but lock-in on a smaller scale happens all the time. Networking equipment suppliers make a lot of money on services and support (it's the open source dream). But the reason they can do it is because they have a monopoly on improvements to their product.
I once sat in on a sales pitch from some embedded Linux company. They sent out 3 salesmen to meet us (at god knows what expense), and then they want to charge us some outrageous price for a support contract just because they once submitted a few patches to the kernel. We told them to bugger off.
I've also witnessed a few sales pitches from the makers of specialize network test equipment like Ixia and Smartbits. That stuff is also expensive as hell, but what are you going to do? There's no cheap alternative, and the hardware + software comes as a bundle. So what are you going to do? We ended up (reluctantly) buying some of it at the outrageous price.
So who is the smart one?
-a
These days, it's impossible for a small company to provide a complete solution on their own. If you consider the end product to be a fully configured server, then probably at least 90% of the code was written by someone else (99% if you include the OS & toolchain).
So when you're a small company, you don't have much leverage with the 10% of the solution that you can provide. Anyone could come in and replace you, especially if your work is all open source. Smart investors know that's it's often better not to invest in the pioneers, but rather in the well-funded players who jump in right after a new technology has matured.
In order to make yourself invaluable, you need to grow so you can provide a complete solution. But to grow you need funding, and to get funding you need IP. So it's a chain reaction, but there's a reason why it happens.
-a
Yeah, sure... lock-in is good for users and bad for vendors. All I'm saying is that lock-in is an essential part of doing business and it's not going away any time soon.
The net result of OSS preventing lock-in is that a) companies that try to commercialize OSS will continue to fail, b) non-OSS companies will become more unscrupulous, and c) OSS companies will try to re-invent their own type of lock-in.
-a
But when your customers don't want lock in, then not having any is a marketable advantage.
Sure... marketing that you don't have lock-in may be an advantage, but that doesn't mean that actually doing it is an advantage.
A smart, successfull investor sees that most businesses are dependent on lock in, and that it pisses customers off, so in 5 years, the successful new businesses will be the ones without lock in, and invest now accordingly.
Giving your customers exactly what they want has never made good business sense either. Typically, the customer wants every feature under the sun for the lowest price possible. The unsuccessul companies just cave in to every demand. The succesful ones charge the maximum price that the market will bear and spend the minimum time possible on technical support. (They don't route your phone call to India just for a lark.)
-a
Heh... yeah actually a couple of weeks ago I went to download.com to look for a specific type of app I wanted (database for tracking golf scores). Pretty much everything I found was crippleware for $25. Not that I would mind spending it, mind you, but none of the programs could do exactly what I wanted, except for one which was incredibly buggy and half-assed. I ended up writing it myself - I guess that's the ultimate in avoiding lock in. :-)
-a
Unfortunately, the presumption of that lock-in period is what justifies a company's initial startup costs. Without it, it's nearly impossible to get VC funding.
/. readers make in their economic pundrity is thinking that everything ends when a company becomes profitable. But realistically, you're not successful until you've made back all the money from the initial investment plus 10% ROI to cover the opportunity cost. Plus, if the majority of companies will fail then the successful ones need to make twice as money in order to still give the investors a 10% average rate of return.
The biggest mistake that
Let's face it: lock in is just smart business. Ignore it at your peril. If you're not always fighting to keep the customers that you have, then you're going to have a lot more time & money to spend on the ones you don't. If you found a company based on some idealistic notion that lock-in is bad, then you are going to fail just like any other two-bit company with no business sense.
-a
Or taking it further, perhaps have it increment the bounty by $1 a day.
That's nice to say... but there's still the question of who is paying this money. Normally a bounty is created when a specific person pledges $X. You can't just postulate that the bounty should increase.
-a
You don't do stuff like this for the money!! 55 CPU years probably costs $20k in the first place. (Unless they leased out a zombie-net or something.)
-a
Debt is not bad if you put your capital to work. But RedHat was already underperforming the market with a $13M return on $391M of assets. When you consider that it's now a $13M return on $1.1B of assets, that's pretty dismal.
/ 67156/reports/rhat_093004.pdf
What are they going to do with this extra $600M? Are they going to triple their products next year? And the year after as well?
Source - RedHat annual report for FY 2004:
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/67
-a
I looked up their annual report. As I mentioned, they used to have $300M in cash. Now they seem to have more than $900M.
/ 67156/reports/rhat_093004.pdf
But my point is this: their operating expenses are only $88k per year so far, and they are currently profitable. So how much debt do they really need? (They're not exactly delivering a spectacular ROE at the moment, so if they only make $13M next year then it will be a spectacular disappointment.)
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/67
-a
The debt was convertible (meaning they can change the debt to stock). Dell has already converted it, if you look at Redhat's balance sheets they showed 600 mil in debt, and over the last 3 quarters that has almost all disappeared as the owners of the debt have converted the debt to stock.
How did RedHat get $600 mil in debt? Last I checked, they had almost $300 mil of cash in the bank and a negligible run rate.
-a
Yeah, but if you own their debt and they do go bankrupt ... you DO own the company.
Yeah, BFD again. Who wants to own a bankrupt company with no IP?
-a
There has been lots of hypothesis testing. One thing evolution predicted was animals with similar traits would have common dna fingerprints - a hypothesis that was given way before we could analyse DNA.
:-))
There's been lots of hypotheses like that which should it is indeed falsiable.
Not only that, but the *differences* between related species have shown clear signs of a random process in action. So while at a macro level, natural selection is a non-random process, at a micro level it is effected by a series of random changes.
The frequency of random mutations is quantifiable, and thus falsifiable. Furthermore, it is pretty hard to argue for intelligent design, and at the same time also claim that the designer introduced random variations between species that just happen to fit the mutation signature of natural selection.
(Which is not to say that I haven't heard any creationists try to argue it.
-a
Well then, maybe both shows have used it.
I remember it being used in an episode of CSI:Miami where a woman is pushed in front of a bus. They have security camera footage where the woman keeps looking behind her, but it's not in the frame. So they get the image from the reflection in some girl's eye.
-a
Fantastic picture zooming predates computers. Columbo solved many a murder by zooming in on a crowd scene or a video to disover a tatoo, monogram, birthmark, etc.
Funny that you would choose Columbo when the seminal example is "Blow Up".
And it was followed by the John Travolta film "Blow Out", which does a similar thing for audio.
-a
What's even funnier is when they zoom into the reflection of someone's eye and pull a clear picture out of that to catch a suspect from a regular security camera on CSI New York.
Maybe you should zoom out instead of zooming in...
It was CSI:Miami. IIRC, the episode where Wolf is first hired.
-a
I tend to agree. Personally, I really don't care if I have to reboot my computer to install a video card driver, as long as it works the first time. Several of my most hellish computer experiences have been related to installing new video cards. I will easily take a reboot over a process that requires me to read some arcane HOWTOs and manually tweak my framebuffer settings.
-a
> He also claims, also correctly, that the FSF
/. last week about how the government is corrupt and all the politicians are in the pockets of the lobbyists and all the laws are writen to favour big corporations.
> engages in price fixing by getting multiple
> vendors to agree to give their products away
> for free.
And here's where you're getting confused. Laws against price fixing exist not to allow other companies to compete, but to allow consumers to get the benefits of competition by prohibiting collusion of those already in the business.
See here's what's funny... I read on
-a
My favorite line from the VA Linux IPO was from Eric Raymond. "Remember when the big question was 'How do we make money at this?'"
-a
And it was in the original Punisher movie as well.
-a
Well put, but given that we are discussing Internet debate then it is probably quicker to identify poor reasoning than it is to reliably determine a poster's age.
Hmmm... IIRC this whole thread arose because many antecedent posts ago, you said that the anonymity of the Internet is a blessing, not a curse.
Well, in some ways it is a blessing because I can come online and satisfy my occasional need to debate people without fear of repercussions.
But as for ensuring the quality of the debate, I find it is a curse. Sure, I guess I will notice after awhile if I am debating with a 10 year old. But it is still nice to have the insta-filter.
-a
Of course an argument should stand on its own merit. I am merely observing a correlation that saves me from wasting some time.
-a
Perhaps, but if your information is accurate and your logic and reasoning is valid, then what more powerful way is there to affect an issue than to shape the development of our youth?
Ahh... but isn't it much more rewarding to shape the development of your own child rather than some anonymous 10 year old on the internet?
I mean, if I could teach 100 kids with a single post then maybe... but doing it one by one is a long hard slog.
As for (b) and (c), your typical 10 year old is not going to engage in such a discussion in the first place. Any 10 year old who does so is by definition exceptional.
I tend to disagree. Not being qualified to enter an argument has never stopped anyone before. Just ask any troll.
I have noticed that kids go through a series of intellectual stages as they mature. As they learn new things, they often become 100% convinced of them. But the next year, they may be 100% convinced of something else. (It's a bit like that scene in the bar from Good Will Hunting.)
I doubt that your average amateur thinker really has a fully-fleshed out view of the world until their mid twenties.
They may not have expernce, but they can certainly adsorb and synthisize information and arguments on a specific subject far exceeding the actual experience of a random adult on an arbitrary subject. An exceptional child with an exceptional viewpoint may just make an exceptional point.
I really doubt that. Even if they do research something on the web, 10 year olds just don't have the necessary skills to think critically. If you tell them something new (be it right or wrong), they are just going to parrot it back to you later.
-a
If they are so stupid then why can't they arguement fall over on its own merit? I dont see a problem with being mistaken while you argue with a 10 year old about politics thinking the 10 year old is really just a dumb adult.
10 year olds aren't necessarily stupid... just immature.
I guess it's a question of what you think the point of debating with someone is in the first place. I guess it's either:
a) to win the argument
b) to learn something new
c) to solidify your own knowledge of something by explaining it to someone else
Well:
a) Winning an argument against a 10 year old is fairly unsatisfying. They lack sufficient critical thinking skills to accept a complicated argument on its own merits. If you do convince them, it is probably not via sound logic.
b) 10 year olds are unlikely to be able to teach me something interesting that I don't already know. If they do, then it is probably not through debate.
c) The topic areas where I would like to be able to clarify my opinion in my own mind, are far beyond the knowledge of a typical 10 year old.
-a
What a crock of shit! You are making a horrible generalization. How about "arguing with a libertarian is always a waste of time" or "arguing with a senior citizen is always a waste of time."
Fine, so it's a generalization. Nothing is really black and white. But when a generalization is true 98-99% of the time, I'm willing to call it a fact.
There are other classes of people with whom I consider debating a waste of time. E.g. religious nutcases, senior citizens with dementia.
I know ten-year-olds who hold more intelligent opinions than many twenty-five year olds.
Fine... and those are probably some of the 25 year olds that I don't really want to talk with either.
-a