Do you fail to note the incredible 90+% of media is controlled by 6 companies in the US?
I think you fail to note his point that 30 years ago 100% of all television news was controlled by the 3 networks. You haven't really made *your* point that corporate control is *increasing*. Most folks used to get the 3 TV stations plus 1 local paper, plus perhaps a newsmagazine (Time, Newsweek.) Now they get all that, plus various cable news sites, plus they log onto their favorite websites (Slashdot, Salon, etc.) and are on 4 e-mails lists from various interest groups (neighborhood associations, etc.)
Note that the political point of view on slashdot versus slate.msn.com or on Fox News versus MTV is much greater than the diversity found in the old mass media.
Do these banner ads _really_ have smaller return on investment than many forms of "conventional" advertising, or is it simply that their ROI is easier to measure in the internet world?
The NYT article points out that Yahoo charges *more* per view than the bus ad you mention. The question is whether that large premium is justified. No one is claiming that banner ads are useless compared to other ads, just that they might be worth no more per viewer than a highway billboard. And if they are worth only the price per view of a highway billboard, then Yahoo is in trouble.
Microsoft has well over 90% market share in the OS market (a much more important market), and I
haven't heard the FCC say a goddamn thing to them about any of their dominant protocols and formats.
Someone already pointed out that the FCC looks at communications/media deals and has nothing to do with Microsoft.
But just as important is that the US gov't has much more leverage over a merger deal than over a non-merging company. Special laws give federal agencies abilities to challenge mergers in court. To avoid the costly court challenge, the companies (here AOL/Time) will negotiate with the Feds to come to terms on a deal.
If you look at post #37 below, they did get a post from someone who claims to have seen the beta in action and who claims to have a contract to put the software on laptops. In some ways this is better than PR-speak from the company itself.
Of course, a call to the company would have been good journalistic practice, but if you have read Slashdot for awhile you might have noticed that these guys aren't journalists. This is more like a bulletin board than a newspaper.
Your objections to a Python license change would go away if they offered [1] a dual license or [2] simply negotiated with RMS about the very small (legal jurisdiction) dispute or [3] offered the BSD license upfront.
Note that TrollTech is dual-licensing -- if your PHB doesn't like the GPL then use the QPL.
Anyway, it sounds like the Python folks themselves think this is easy to resolve.
If you don't think a Comp Sci degree is going to help you as a programmer, then major in History or English or Physics but still go to College. As you get older, you are going to miss the college experience, which is more than classes and more than the subjects. You will learn how to think and how to be challenged by those who disagree with you.
You talk as though Krugman thinks there has been little technological progess in the last century and that he is nostalgic for the past.
His argument is exactly the *opposite*: that the technological improvement since 1900 is so huge that it swamps anything going on in Information Technology today.
So, as a lawyer, so you want to tell us whether the fair-use provisions of copyright law allow for the reprinting of comments? It seems to me that anyone can quote *parts* of a comment, under fair use. Does the law change if an entire, short comment is quoted?
Also, what about the following analogy. Say I make a oral comment in an obviously public way. Is it illegal for someone to print my public comments? (I *own* my own oral comments -- at least certainly no one else does.)
If it is not legal to print the comments in a book, then is the Slashdot archive illegal?
Isn't the key question whether AOL, in the future, standardizes on Netscape/Mozilla for its users? If AOL users all use Netscape, then IE can't be considered the sole "standard" and web sites might actually have to adhere to *real* open standards.
I teach some patent economics, and this poster doesn't have it quite right. The argument for patents is *both* that they encourage innovation (this is by far the most commonly cited reason) and secondarily that they encourage the publication of ideas. The legal and economic literature explicitly realizes that there is as a trade-off between these goals and the establishment of monopoly power.
AFAIK, you are wrong about IBM's profits on mainframes. This is still a large and profitable business and IBM's monopoly position is of course stronger than ever. What changed is that industry *growth* shifted to PCs and IBM largely missed out on this shift (even after they "invented" the Intel/MS PC platform.) Thus, mainframes are still a great business for IBM, although a shrinking one.
In the early days, the whole point of a browser (e.g. Mosaic) was to integrate functions, early browsers handled at least gopher, ftp and http protocals, that is the whole point of the protocal:// addressing system. I presume you were very upset when browsers (*early on*) starting displaying gifs and jpegs, why not just hand them off to xv?
its been done (before posting)
on
911 Calls Linux
·
· Score: 1
See the replies to a similar post above -- the story was verifyed via a phone call to a *published* number prior to posting by slashdot and several readers also called directly to confirm.
How does a post with bad arithmetic get boosted to 2 points (as of noon on Friday)?
$20*100,000=$2,000,000.
Still, everyone understands that the Linux community isn't going to see $2,000,000 from this because 100,000 folks aren't going to sign up. (I don't know that $20/customer is reasonable either.)
In addition to Applix, Star Office and KOffice, don't forget Corel Office and the promised GNOME office suite (the version of gnumeric that shipped with RH6.0 just read in an Excel spreadsheet quite nicely for me.)
Microsoft's profits depend on government enforcement of its "intellectual property rights." Modern capitalism in general depends on a strong government defense of property.
On a separate point, does the writer really "fear" a democratic government that offers constitutional protections to liberty and dissent? More than he fears living in anarchy? He might try living in some place without a working government, like Sierra Leone, before deciding that government is so bad.
The suggestion for a specialized anti-trust court is a good one, although your time frame is not realistic. I've sat through some of the court testimony and it is clear that the judge doesn't follow many of the technical parts of the case that relate to both computers and economics.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you fail to note the incredible 90+% of media is controlled by 6 companies in the US?
I think you fail to note his point that 30 years ago 100% of all television news was controlled by the 3 networks. You haven't really made *your* point that corporate control is *increasing*. Most folks used to get the 3 TV stations plus 1 local paper, plus perhaps a newsmagazine (Time, Newsweek.) Now they get all that, plus various cable news sites, plus they log onto their favorite websites (Slashdot, Salon, etc.) and are on 4 e-mails lists from various interest groups (neighborhood associations, etc.)
Note that the political point of view on slashdot versus slate.msn.com or on Fox News versus MTV is much greater than the diversity found in the old mass media.
The NYT article points out that Yahoo charges *more* per view than the bus ad you mention. The question is whether that large premium is justified. No one is claiming that banner ads are useless compared to other ads, just that they might be worth no more per viewer than a highway billboard. And if they are worth only the price per view of a highway billboard, then Yahoo is in trouble.
Someone already pointed out that the FCC looks at communications/media deals and has nothing to do with Microsoft.
But just as important is that the US gov't has much more leverage over a merger deal than over a non-merging company. Special laws give federal agencies abilities to challenge mergers in court. To avoid the costly court challenge, the companies (here AOL/Time) will negotiate with the Feds to come to terms on a deal.
If you look at post #37 below, they did get a post from someone who claims to have seen the beta in action and who claims to have a contract to put the software on laptops. In some ways this is better than PR-speak from the company itself.
Of course, a call to the company would have been good journalistic practice, but if you have read Slashdot for awhile you might have noticed that these guys aren't journalists. This is more like a bulletin board than a newspaper.
Your objections to a Python license change would go away if they offered [1] a dual license or [2] simply negotiated with RMS about the very small (legal jurisdiction) dispute or [3] offered the BSD license upfront.
Note that TrollTech is dual-licensing -- if your PHB doesn't like the GPL then use the QPL.
Anyway, it sounds like the Python folks themselves think this is easy to resolve.
If you don't think a Comp Sci degree is going to help you as a programmer, then major in History or English or Physics but still go to College. As you get older, you are going to miss the college experience, which is more than classes and more than the subjects. You will learn how to think and how to be challenged by those who disagree with you.
I don't know what world you live in, but my people call them bars or dance clubs.
Yes, they are called bars and they are also legally called on to pay royalties on music they play -- there is a standard contracting arrangment.
You talk as though Krugman thinks there has been little technological progess in the last century and that he is nostalgic for the past.
His argument is exactly the *opposite*: that the technological improvement since 1900 is so huge that it swamps anything going on in Information Technology today.
(IANAL)
So, as a lawyer, so you want to tell us whether the fair-use provisions of copyright law allow for the reprinting of comments? It seems to me that anyone can quote *parts* of a comment, under fair
use. Does the law change if an entire, short
comment is quoted?
Also, what about the following analogy. Say I make a oral comment in an obviously public way. Is it illegal for someone to print my public comments? (I *own* my own oral comments -- at least certainly no one else does.)
If it is not legal to print the comments in a book, then is the Slashdot archive illegal?
Isn't the key question whether AOL, in the future, standardizes on Netscape/Mozilla for its users?
If AOL users all use Netscape, then IE can't be
considered the sole "standard" and web sites
might actually have to adhere to *real* open standards.
I teach some patent economics, and this poster doesn't have it quite right. The argument for patents is *both* that they encourage innovation (this is by far the most commonly cited reason) and secondarily that they encourage the publication of ideas. The legal and economic literature explicitly realizes that there is as a trade-off between these goals and the establishment of monopoly power.
AFAIK, you are wrong about IBM's profits on mainframes. This is still a large and profitable business and IBM's monopoly position is of course stronger than ever. What changed is that industry *growth* shifted to PCs and IBM largely missed out on this shift (even after they "invented" the Intel/MS PC platform.) Thus, mainframes are still a great business for IBM, although a shrinking one.
In the early days, the whole point of a browser (e.g. Mosaic) was to integrate functions, early browsers handled at least gopher, ftp and http protocals, that is the whole point of the protocal:// addressing system. I presume you were very upset when browsers (*early on*) starting displaying gifs and jpegs, why not just hand them off to xv?
See the replies to a similar post above -- the
story was verifyed via a phone call to a *published* number prior to posting by slashdot and several readers also called directly to confirm.
How does a post with bad arithmetic get boosted to 2 points (as of noon on Friday)?
$20*100,000=$2,000,000.
Still, everyone understands that the Linux community isn't going to see $2,000,000 from this because 100,000 folks aren't going to sign up. (I don't know that $20/customer is reasonable either.)
In addition to Applix, Star Office and KOffice,
don't forget Corel Office and the promised GNOME
office suite (the version of gnumeric that shipped
with RH6.0 just read in an Excel spreadsheet quite
nicely for me.)
Microsoft's profits depend on government enforcement of its "intellectual property rights." Modern capitalism in general depends on a strong government defense of property.
On a separate point, does the writer really "fear" a democratic government that offers constitutional protections to liberty and dissent? More than he fears living in anarchy? He might try living in some place without a working government, like Sierra Leone, before deciding that government is so bad.
The suggestion for a specialized anti-trust court is a good one, although your time frame is not realistic. I've sat through some of the court testimony and it is clear that the judge doesn't follow many of the technical parts of the case that relate to both computers and economics.