I'm from Brazil and last year I've worked for people from PT, president Lula political party. There is real interest on free software not just as a way to reduce costs or developing brazilian programmers.
Sao Paulo is now giving public internet access to schollars with a linux distributio in old pc's . In the middle of Bahia, in a very poor village called Valente there is a cooperative of rural workers that created a provider to sell internet access to the "riches" via modem and (U$10 month) and provides to the poor free and cheap access in a kind of cyber cafe. Free software server side. Windows and Linux mixed desktop side. With Internet they export to Denmark!
It seems like a way to make easier to people to have contact with PCs. In big cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo or in small villages as Valente the adoption of Free Software promotes digital inclusion to people that has not heard about F.S.F or Microsoft.
People who studies economics faces some irreal hipothesis in text books. The first topic most students have to deal with when taking the microeconomics course is when you have a big group of firms selling the very same product. If the buyer has perfect information about prices hi will choose the lowest price. The buyer's choice will influence the behaviors of all other firms that will tend to get their prices down to beat the one choosed by the buyer. We will have a dynamics that will make the price go down until the item will cost to the user the same it costs to be produced.
In the real world it is very unrealistc to believe someone could have information about all the sellers prices. But with Data Minig we can have MORE information about sellers than in the real world, and we can access this infrmation with a smaller cost. We should then be nearest to perfect competition books theorize than in the real world. There is although some problems to solve before jumping to this conclusion: There is not that big number of firms competing, delivery fees, warranty and time of arrival of the product can be very different from seller to seller.
Could a "perfect bot" could handle all this information. If the answer is positive firms can folow two paths : cartelization or dumping. The first one happens when firms pacts prices together and force buyers to py more, because competition is "freeze". The second one hapens when the firm artificially gets down the price to a lower level than the costs to force the competition to bankrupcy. Both behaviors are dangerous to consumers and are forbiden in most countries.
IMHO a site's EULA can't go agains market law. I presume that, at least inside the same democratic country, it is legal to data mine in that way. And I can't see why a competitor can't use it as tool to build it's price strategy. It's the invisible hand Adam Smith's intuished about.
The WWW is evolving, maybe in a way some people can dislike, and is using the same rules we use in the real world to make money.
And I'm sure competitor will soon find solutions to prevent data mining from their sites, at least information they don't want to share. IT solutions. That do not require lawyers but intelligence and insight.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm from Brazil and last year I've worked for people from PT, president Lula political party. There is real interest on free software not just as a way to reduce costs or developing brazilian programmers.
Sao Paulo is now giving public internet access to schollars with a linux distributio in old pc's . In the middle of Bahia, in a very poor village called Valente there is a cooperative of rural workers that created a provider to sell internet access to the "riches" via modem and (U$10 month) and provides to the poor free and cheap access in a kind of cyber cafe. Free software server side. Windows and Linux mixed desktop side. With Internet they export to Denmark!
It seems like a way to make easier to people to have contact with PCs. In big cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo or in small villages as Valente the adoption of Free Software promotes digital inclusion to people that has not heard about F.S.F or Microsoft.
People who studies economics faces some irreal hipothesis in text books. The first topic most students have to deal with when taking the microeconomics course is when you have a big group of firms selling the very same product. If the buyer has perfect information about prices hi will choose the lowest price. The buyer's choice will influence the behaviors of all other firms that will tend to get their prices down to beat the one choosed by the buyer. We will have a dynamics that will make the price go down until the item will cost to the user the same it costs to be produced. In the real world it is very unrealistc to believe someone could have information about all the sellers prices. But with Data Minig we can have MORE information about sellers than in the real world, and we can access this infrmation with a smaller cost. We should then be nearest to perfect competition books theorize than in the real world. There is although some problems to solve before jumping to this conclusion: There is not that big number of firms competing, delivery fees, warranty and time of arrival of the product can be very different from seller to seller. Could a "perfect bot" could handle all this information. If the answer is positive firms can folow two paths : cartelization or dumping. The first one happens when firms pacts prices together and force buyers to py more, because competition is "freeze". The second one hapens when the firm artificially gets down the price to a lower level than the costs to force the competition to bankrupcy. Both behaviors are dangerous to consumers and are forbiden in most countries. IMHO a site's EULA can't go agains market law. I presume that, at least inside the same democratic country, it is legal to data mine in that way. And I can't see why a competitor can't use it as tool to build it's price strategy. It's the invisible hand Adam Smith's intuished about. The WWW is evolving, maybe in a way some people can dislike, and is using the same rules we use in the real world to make money. And I'm sure competitor will soon find solutions to prevent data mining from their sites, at least information they don't want to share. IT solutions. That do not require lawyers but intelligence and insight.