If monopolies generate the highest profit, why aren't people wanting to have their companies eaten by Microsoft? Monopolies generate high profit for the monopoly, and little profit for those it has swallowed.
Media industry...can I watch American Idol anywhere other than Fox? Sure, I can watch J. Random Singing Show, but not American Idol. Car industry...I can't switch car brands very easily, and its difficult for a new manufacturer to enter the market (see the 1948 Tucker for an example of this, and how the existant oligopoly crushed it).
Monopolies arise when each competitor can sufficiently differentiate its products from the others' to the point where each player holds a monopoly over its product, and there are no real competitors. This is what happens in the OS industry. The Windows APIs, Linux APIs, Mac OS X APIs, etc. are sufficiently different that it's non-trivial to port the majority of software between platforms, and often not worth the effort economically. Video games and music are also like this: if I want Halo, I want Halo, not Bob's Shooting Game. If I want Britney Spears' music, I have to buy from Britney Spears and her distributor; there is no other source for her music. This is why video game and music prices are still high, though more players are in the market and production costs have fallen.
Oligopolies arise when the products are so equal there is no way to compete. The diamond industry is like this: one seller's diamond is not substantially different from anothers. De Beers controls a monopoly and cartel over the diamond industry, because other suppliers are willing to help De Beers keep prices high. De Beers can then advertise the diamond itself, knowing it has control over the industry. (The image of diamonds for engagement rings actually comes from an extremely involved advertising campaign: see Wikipedia's "Diamond" article.) Similarly, one company's oil is no different from another company's, so Standard Oil could come into being as a monopoly.
Notice that both the OS monopolies and the diamond cartels arose from a free market structure applied to products that lend themselves to noncompetition. A perfect market would be closer to the ice cream market. There's enough similarity that consumers can switch brands for negative actions, but enough difference that they'll remain loyal for positive actions. The key to having a good free market is that the product must be different enough to support competition, but not bind the consumer to the product - the consumer must be able to choose a different producer easily.
Not necessarily faster than c (impossible for tardyons like us) but extremely close, so that by the time the reflection of the radar beam from the light reaches the stoplight, we're almost at the stoplight, and after the few chip cycles we're past the light.
The question is, are you moving moderately fast to cause blueshift, or extremely fast so that the light change doesn't reach you until you're at the light?
Say you take a hash or sum of the latest Fedora ISOs, and it comes out to some value x. If I make an equal-length file that has the same sum x, but is not Fedora, I can crack the Fedora servers, wreak havoc everywhere, and replace the ISOs. If the Fedora people have trouble fixing my other damage, they may be too busy to notice that the ISOs are different, even though they're the same size and sum.
Now, suppose I make/find a file that not only collides with the ISOs, but also does largely what the ISOs did (to bypass the obvious "wait, this isn't a disk image" test) and contains a nice Trojan horse....
How can they do better? The phrase "best of our ability" means they cannot be surer of the statements' accuracy. They can get away with "We tried our best" because they cannot have tried harder.
But that wouldn't be trusting the vendor. That would be knowing there are no back doors. Trusting would be exactly that: being able to place your trust in the vendor without using the back doors.
RMS may be right that closed-source products may have security holes. But if, say, one of my friends wrote a closed-source product that handles security, and I were confident of his/her programming skills, I would be able to trust there are no intentional security holes.
Very few people actually inspect each line of open-source software, so we are still trusting them. Logically, it makes less sense to trust open-source vendors, since they place their code in the open knowing that statistically not many will inspect/suspect it for security holes.
The value of the system is destroyed. Its image as useful for DRM is in danger.
The US was always vulnerable to hijacked commercial planes used as kamikazes, but we never realized it as much and panicked about our airline security before 11 September. Can you truly say that airport security in all its aspects (not just execution) was the same between before the attacks and after planes were allowed to fly (not enough new security stuff had been established then)?
They've destroyed the encryption system, which belongs mostly to Apple and partially to the public as far as rights to use go. Apple's DRM system has can lose the trust of music business leaders, who may choose not to renew their iTMS contract. The music is not the question. A vandal is still a vandal if he tears town the public lamp post in his yard so he can do what he wants with his technically private property in that square.
They paid for the ability to play the tunes on iTunes or an iPod.
They definitely can't play it somewhere where they can profit from it, can they? Even though it's a "paid-for tune," it's still but a license for the tune.
If you want the tune, be prepared to have thousands, if not millions, of dollars ready to buy all rights to the song. If you want some rights to listen, accept the rights given for you at the lower price.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the music distribution system is fair or fairly priced, but you still have no legal right to use the tune contrary to its license.
I use http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ - yes, it's by Microsoft/MSN, but it allows you to go to higher resolution than TerraServer.com permits for unregistered/nonpaying users.
An equivalent site (mirror?) though still made by MS is is http://terraserver-usa.com/.
I'm going to talk to my civics/free enterprise teacher about this tomorrow and ask her opinion, because I remember when we did taxes in class there were specific reasons why we have a split sales/property/income tax system. As far as I remember, one important reason is that total property amount is very unlikely to fall and unlikely to rise considerably, and total income is unlkely to vary considerably and beyond predictions. Sales, however, fluctuates quite a bit with small effects upon it. With income and property taxes, governments are more or less sure they will have x money for them to budget. With sales taxes, though, they cannot be as sure.
Yes, you may say this will solve our chronic deficit budget problem, but the practice has been so ingrained that I'd be surprised to see the budget balance in my lifetime.
Also, think of how much income and property tax you're paying this year, increase it by 20% (the government if they choose to implement the sales-tax-only system will increase taxes for safety), and divide by the money you spent this year. That will be the national sales tax percentage. Add it to your current state/local sales tax percentage, and I think that number is going to turn out too high for comfort.
Drug money for purchases remains untaxed; either way, we only tax at most half of what's spent on transactions in the black market - income for those buying, or purchases for those selling. Someone will also need to mandate the sliding scale, cancelling the effect of removing the IRS.
We'll also see some political fighting over Congress's vs. states' rights and the tenth and sixteenth amendments (powers not explicitly federal are state powers, and Congress can do income taxes, respectively).
It's a desktop like Windows for Linux, provided for previous users of Windows starting to use Linux. The adjectives can be read in two different ways.
In a sense, a Linux Desktop for Windows Users and a Windows Desktop for Linux Users could be either this, or something like GNOME or KDE rootless via Cygwin.
I know that Slashdot allows anonymous viewing and posting, but there's no real need to register unless you want the journal and eventual karma bonus. Not enough people view at 1 instead of 0 to warrant not being an AC with a manual.sig of an identity...and anyway if your posts are worth reading they'll be moderated up.
So why is Slashdot registration OK, but NYT not? Is it because Slashdot requires less info from you? Seriously, what do you think NYT's going to do with the info?
I don't get it. Seriously, what's wrong with registering? I don't expect the NYT to come to my house and mug me or anything, and the amount of spam e-mail/phone calls I get is enough not to warrant keeping a potential threat from NYT out. It's convenient to be able to use a real link instead of a partner one.
Hm...what if Slashdot arranges to be an NYT partner?
I did not have Nazi Germany in mind -- or even Germany itself -- when making that post. I took what I saw, applied the American legal system to it, and analyzed it. My apologies if I sounded dumb.
stick to your corrupt morals and your culture of victimization and non-responsibility, here in Germany we will take care of our own
You've got your own corrupt morals and victimization complex? Wow, you guys are really creative. I thought the US pretty much had that culture down. Great job!
Aren't people already suspecting SCO is doing Microsoft's dirty work in its fight against OSS?
SCO got a German PR agency to write their claims in a news release. Since it's pretty obvious that no PR agency would by itself do so, couldn't SCO still be fined for making these claims, even if not directly? Even so, the agreement should've stopped "the claims being made" rather than "SCO making the claims," since SCO markedly benefits by the claims and can almost always be shown responsible for some random third-party's claim.
Interesting that this gains its strength through an out-of-court settlement with a private company that extends a temporary injunction against SCO's claims. Some US group (EFF? Red Hat? OSDN? Netscape? Isn't there a group of Linux vendors? FSF?) should try to do the same - get something small done in court, to say "We're not afraid of fighting this in court," then extend that considerably out of court with a promise to return to court.
Heh, the ad on this article is GlobalServers' "Stop worrying about SCO" ad.
Seriously, ad blocking is a Bad Idea. I can agree with intrusive ads and popups being blocked (they weren't going to get sales anyway). However, blocking normal ads eventually forces sites to use a paid model rather than an ad-supported model.
Imagine: you could only post if you were a Slashdot subscriber. Pretty horrible.
state that the total energy + equivalent mass (that is, E + mc^2) in the universe remains constant. We're messing with the mass to give off a lot of energy. There used to be two laws until Einstein proposed the equivalence between matter and energy.
Slashdot Mirror
If monopolies generate the highest profit, why aren't people wanting to have their companies eaten by Microsoft? Monopolies generate high profit for the monopoly, and little profit for those it has swallowed.
Media industry...can I watch American Idol anywhere other than Fox? Sure, I can watch J. Random Singing Show, but not American Idol. Car industry...I can't switch car brands very easily, and its difficult for a new manufacturer to enter the market (see the 1948 Tucker for an example of this, and how the existant oligopoly crushed it).
Would you prefer a disaster in crops made to feed the hungry or grass on a golf course?
We need the experience from a less-critical application before we go around doing useful stuff.
Monopolies arise when each competitor can sufficiently differentiate its products from the others' to the point where each player holds a monopoly over its product, and there are no real competitors. This is what happens in the OS industry. The Windows APIs, Linux APIs, Mac OS X APIs, etc. are sufficiently different that it's non-trivial to port the majority of software between platforms, and often not worth the effort economically. Video games and music are also like this: if I want Halo, I want Halo, not Bob's Shooting Game. If I want Britney Spears' music, I have to buy from Britney Spears and her distributor; there is no other source for her music. This is why video game and music prices are still high, though more players are in the market and production costs have fallen.
Oligopolies arise when the products are so equal there is no way to compete. The diamond industry is like this: one seller's diamond is not substantially different from anothers. De Beers controls a monopoly and cartel over the diamond industry, because other suppliers are willing to help De Beers keep prices high. De Beers can then advertise the diamond itself, knowing it has control over the industry. (The image of diamonds for engagement rings actually comes from an extremely involved advertising campaign: see Wikipedia's "Diamond" article.) Similarly, one company's oil is no different from another company's, so Standard Oil could come into being as a monopoly.
Notice that both the OS monopolies and the diamond cartels arose from a free market structure applied to products that lend themselves to noncompetition. A perfect market would be closer to the ice cream market. There's enough similarity that consumers can switch brands for negative actions, but enough difference that they'll remain loyal for positive actions. The key to having a good free market is that the product must be different enough to support competition, but not bind the consumer to the product - the consumer must be able to choose a different producer easily.
Not necessarily faster than c (impossible for tardyons like us) but extremely close, so that by the time the reflection of the radar beam from the light reaches the stoplight, we're almost at the stoplight, and after the few chip cycles we're past the light.
The question is, are you moving moderately fast to cause blueshift, or extremely fast so that the light change doesn't reach you until you're at the light?
Say you take a hash or sum of the latest Fedora ISOs, and it comes out to some value x. If I make an equal-length file that has the same sum x, but is not Fedora, I can crack the Fedora servers, wreak havoc everywhere, and replace the ISOs. If the Fedora people have trouble fixing my other damage, they may be too busy to notice that the ISOs are different, even though they're the same size and sum.
Now, suppose I make/find a file that not only collides with the ISOs, but also does largely what the ISOs did (to bypass the obvious "wait, this isn't a disk image" test) and contains a nice Trojan horse....
How can they do better? The phrase "best of our ability" means they cannot be surer of the statements' accuracy. They can get away with "We tried our best" because they cannot have tried harder.
But that wouldn't be trusting the vendor. That would be knowing there are no back doors. Trusting would be exactly that: being able to place your trust in the vendor without using the back doors.
RMS may be right that closed-source products may have security holes. But if, say, one of my friends wrote a closed-source product that handles security, and I were confident of his/her programming skills, I would be able to trust there are no intentional security holes.
Very few people actually inspect each line of open-source software, so we are still trusting them. Logically, it makes less sense to trust open-source vendors, since they place their code in the open knowing that statistically not many will inspect/suspect it for security holes.
I have a computer now. I don't have an XBox.
And since you posted to Slashdot, I'm assuming you have a computer too.
Granted, it would be interesting to use CXBX on Linux on a real XBox...
The value of the system is destroyed. Its image as useful for DRM is in danger.
The US was always vulnerable to hijacked commercial planes used as kamikazes, but we never realized it as much and panicked about our airline security before 11 September. Can you truly say that airport security in all its aspects (not just execution) was the same between before the attacks and after planes were allowed to fly (not enough new security stuff had been established then)?
They've destroyed the encryption system, which belongs mostly to Apple and partially to the public as far as rights to use go. Apple's DRM system has can lose the trust of music business leaders, who may choose not to renew their iTMS contract. The music is not the question. A vandal is still a vandal if he tears town the public lamp post in his yard so he can do what he wants with his technically private property in that square.
But they did not pay for the tunes.
They paid for the ability to play the tunes on iTunes or an iPod.
They definitely can't play it somewhere where they can profit from it, can they? Even though it's a "paid-for tune," it's still but a license for the tune.
If you want the tune, be prepared to have thousands, if not millions, of dollars ready to buy all rights to the song. If you want some rights to listen, accept the rights given for you at the lower price.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the music distribution system is fair or fairly priced, but you still have no legal right to use the tune contrary to its license.
The Slashdot cannon? We have an official Slashdot projectile launcher made with Monty Python videos!?
Oddly enough, I can just picture Dumbledore saying that.
It probably helps that it'd fit with the books....
I use http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ - yes, it's by Microsoft/MSN, but it allows you to go to higher resolution than TerraServer.com permits for unregistered/nonpaying users.
An equivalent site (mirror?) though still made by MS is is http://terraserver-usa.com/.
I'm going to talk to my civics/free enterprise teacher about this tomorrow and ask her opinion, because I remember when we did taxes in class there were specific reasons why we have a split sales/property/income tax system. As far as I remember, one important reason is that total property amount is very unlikely to fall and unlikely to rise considerably, and total income is unlkely to vary considerably and beyond predictions. Sales, however, fluctuates quite a bit with small effects upon it. With income and property taxes, governments are more or less sure they will have x money for them to budget. With sales taxes, though, they cannot be as sure.
Yes, you may say this will solve our chronic deficit budget problem, but the practice has been so ingrained that I'd be surprised to see the budget balance in my lifetime.
Also, think of how much income and property tax you're paying this year, increase it by 20% (the government if they choose to implement the sales-tax-only system will increase taxes for safety), and divide by the money you spent this year. That will be the national sales tax percentage. Add it to your current state/local sales tax percentage, and I think that number is going to turn out too high for comfort.
Drug money for purchases remains untaxed; either way, we only tax at most half of what's spent on transactions in the black market - income for those buying, or purchases for those selling. Someone will also need to mandate the sliding scale, cancelling the effect of removing the IRS.
We'll also see some political fighting over Congress's vs. states' rights and the tenth and sixteenth amendments (powers not explicitly federal are state powers, and Congress can do income taxes, respectively).
Some more....
1. Threaten to ram old ladies off the road.
2. ???
3. Profit!
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of automated cars targetting old ladies and running them off the road!
Old ladies ARE DYING!!!
I, for one, run our old-lady overlords off the road...
(Fine, mod me down, it might teach me to do homework or something instead of posting to Slashdot....)
Yes and no.
It's a desktop like Windows for Linux, provided for previous users of Windows starting to use Linux. The adjectives can be read in two different ways.
In a sense, a Linux Desktop for Windows Users and a Windows Desktop for Linux Users could be either this, or something like GNOME or KDE rootless via Cygwin.
Uh...you register at Slashdot.
.sig of an identity...and anyway if your posts are worth reading they'll be moderated up.
I know that Slashdot allows anonymous viewing and posting, but there's no real need to register unless you want the journal and eventual karma bonus. Not enough people view at 1 instead of 0 to warrant not being an AC with a manual
So why is Slashdot registration OK, but NYT not? Is it because Slashdot requires less info from you? Seriously, what do you think NYT's going to do with the info?
I registered at NYT once. It took me a few minutes, but it saves me the time thenceforth of looking for an equivalent free article.
I get no spam from them.
I don't get it. Seriously, what's wrong with registering? I don't expect the NYT to come to my house and mug me or anything, and the amount of spam e-mail/phone calls I get is enough not to warrant keeping a potential threat from NYT out. It's convenient to be able to use a real link instead of a partner one.
Hm...what if Slashdot arranges to be an NYT partner?
Thoroughly mistaken. You overestimated me.
I did not have Nazi Germany in mind -- or even Germany itself -- when making that post. I took what I saw, applied the American legal system to it, and analyzed it. My apologies if I sounded dumb.
stick to your corrupt morals and your culture of victimization and non-responsibility, here in Germany we will take care of our own
You've got your own corrupt morals and victimization complex? Wow, you guys are really creative. I thought the US pretty much had that culture down. Great job!
Aren't people already suspecting SCO is doing Microsoft's dirty work in its fight against OSS?
SCO got a German PR agency to write their claims in a news release. Since it's pretty obvious that no PR agency would by itself do so, couldn't SCO still be fined for making these claims, even if not directly? Even so, the agreement should've stopped "the claims being made" rather than "SCO making the claims," since SCO markedly benefits by the claims and can almost always be shown responsible for some random third-party's claim.
Interesting that this gains its strength through an out-of-court settlement with a private company that extends a temporary injunction against SCO's claims. Some US group (EFF? Red Hat? OSDN? Netscape? Isn't there a group of Linux vendors? FSF?) should try to do the same - get something small done in court, to say "We're not afraid of fighting this in court," then extend that considerably out of court with a promise to return to court.
Heh, the ad on this article is GlobalServers' "Stop worrying about SCO" ad.
Seriously, ad blocking is a Bad Idea. I can agree with intrusive ads and popups being blocked (they weren't going to get sales anyway). However, blocking normal ads eventually forces sites to use a paid model rather than an ad-supported model.
Imagine: you could only post if you were a Slashdot subscriber. Pretty horrible.
the laws of thermodynamics
state that the total energy + equivalent mass (that is, E + mc^2) in the universe remains constant. We're messing with the mass to give off a lot of energy. There used to be two laws until Einstein proposed the equivalence between matter and energy.