The cost to produce one additional unit of software (marginal cost) is very near zero. Furthermore, the average cost per unit at higher levels of production is always decreasing. The fixed costs of development are spread over ever increasing copies of software, which each have negligible cost to produce.
Software development is a contestable market. That means that new companies can enter and exit the market at an insignificant cost. (Anyone can write software at home and distribute copies over the Internet.) In a contestable market, if the average cost curve has negative slope where it crosses market demand (guaranteed for digital copies, since the slope is negative everywhere), there is a "natural monopoly". The "natural contestable monopoly" firm must set output and price at the point where their average cost curve crosses market demand, where profits equal zero. At a lower price, the firm takes losses, and at a higher price, it invites competition. Even then, a firm that can incur lower fixed costs (zero for open source) can outcompete the others. The price would tend to move to where marginal cost (near zero) meets demand.
Essentially, profit-seeking companies must innovate first, before a zero-development-cost solution becomes available. They must continue to innovate, and always ensure that the consumers are willing to pay more for higher quality and additional features, otherwise they sell fewer copies.
So open-source won't kill the industry. It is the heel-nipping dog that will drive the industry towards more innovation and greater consumer satisfaction. Unfortunately, there is not much room for either profit or error, unless your company has just invented something totally new. In that case, a patent can provide breathing room, though piracy still puts limits on pricing.
Also, though 100 families may become unemployed when an open source project is completed, 100 million can now become more productive at near-zero cost. The hundred can now move on to a new project with no competitors.
The problem with the EM transmission spectrum is not licensed use vs. unlicensed use. It is the fact that EM bandwidth is not ownable. Essentially, the federal government claims ownership over the whole spectrum, and doles it out in bits and pieces via licensing and FCC enforcement actions.
Don't reform the FCC. Auction off frequencies, with permanent ownership rights, to the public!
This program could also be linked to a web-searching robot for fact-checking and proper attributions. It could detect plagiarism within seconds, and generate a probability that any given statement is correct.
And then it could be run on Slashdot in lieu of metamoderation.
If they change the method they use to redact text, the newer method could be compared to existing documents redacted using the older method. If the information revealed by analysis of a new redact is not a subset of that revealed by the old method, the total revealed information increases rather than decreases.
Perhaps your view is skewed by your association with the aforementioned prestigious museum? Not all museums are well-supported by foundations and donations. The small, narrow-focus museums have to watch every dime, and sometimes charge admission. It is easier for them to substitute the time value of their [i]volunteers[/i] for the dollar value of their technology. If they can spend 50% as much money on hardware and professional support, and 1000% as much volunteer time in setup and maintenance, they still come out ahead. If some of their volunteers are from Slashdot, so much the better.
The phone analogy is good, but backwards. This situation seems more akin to installing a new payphone in your living room, rather than using a cheap phone from Wal-Mart. The museum in question cannot afford to waste an extra few thousand dollars on features, reliability, and personnel that it doesn't need. They are asking Slashdotters for free help over the Internet, after all.
If there's any chance that it will generate a financial return within 5 years.
With any large advance in technology, there are usually smaller incremental advances that can be made profitable while research continues. Jumping straight to a space elevator with no interim benefits is the equivalent of not manufacturing desktop computers until you can use a 1 GHz+ processor.
If handled correctly, copyrights and patents foster creativity and innovation in the market. If handled incorrectly, they have the opposite effect. Government patent offices do not, in my opinion, handle I.P. correctly.
BTW, there shouldn't be any municipal water supplies. Drinking water companies need not be run by the city, when a for-profit company could do the job. Likewise, patents need not be exclusively administered by one corruptable government office.
The FCC exists on the premise that it owns the EM spectrum. If broadcasters had actual property rights for the frequency they used, they could defend themselves from jamming and interference on their own dime and their own time.
As it is now, the FCC allocates huge chunks of the spectrum for government/military use, and mere slivers for commercial/civilian use. I would rather have more bandwidth available for wireless networking, cell phones, community radio, or any other constructive use than for nefarious killing-oriented purposes, but the FCC is a political entity, subject to the whims of the rulers. They aren't there to protect the spectrum, they are there to protect their revenue. And their revenue comes from big media and politicians, not small businesses and hobbyists.
Anything worthwhile can be paid for by voluntarily invested money instead of tax dollars. And tax dollars are not a fixed pool of funding--a dollar spent on NASA pipe dreams is a dollar taken from the public, not a dollar taken from the military, or any other part of government. Both of those dollars could have been used to fund a private enterprise researching technologies of more immediate utility to humanity.
In other words, if GE wanted to invent superior cabling, I could buy more stock to fund the project, and thus profit from the super-long suspension bridges that would be built. If NASA invented superior cabling, I get to pay more taxes so they can build a space elevator, which I would then be charged additional money to use.
Even if you found some method of oxygenating the blood, it is also important to remove the carbon dioxide. If you also had some method of freeing the oxygen from CO2 and sequestering the carbon, you could substitute the external energy source for breathing. Just remember to watch those batteries.
Electronic voting gives the corrupt more leverage over the process. It is easier for a single person to influence a large number of votes, and harder for that person to be caught.
It is much like a fixed game of gambling. Outside of the realm of electronics, dice can be weighted, decks of cards stacked, and wheels magnetized. Gamblers can inspect the gaming apparatus, to ensure that he is not being cheated.
When the gambling is all digital, it is relatively simple to insert cheating methods, undetectable to the gambler. I did it myself with a programmable calculator in the 9th grade (not for monetary gain, of course). Without examining the underlying code, an inspector cannot know whether the device is fair, or if the cheating code is simply deactivated long enough to pass inspection.
Receipts are usually opposed. The public reason is that a receipt enables vote buying, where the voter provides the receipt to the buyer to prove cooperation.
Re:Why doesn't the govt produce the code?
on
Evoting in the News
·
· Score: 1
But that plan does not provide sufficient kickbacks to corporate campaign sponsors!
The process for review would be tightly bound in red tape, and anyone using it would be investigated by the FBI. It would also overrun its budget by 30000% and take 20 years longer than necessary. At the end of that time, it would be obsolete and completely unusable, so of course they would have to do the whole thing over again.
For an interesting read on the future of nanotechnology, try reading Slant by Greg Bear. Interesting topics covered include: the nutritional requirements of nano-machines, waste heat generated by matter conversion, and even a supercomputer based on bacterial conjugation.
Companies manufacture products such that what it costs to produce an additional item (marginal cost) equals the revenue earned by selling that last item (marginal revenue). That level of production maximizes profits--the mathematics guarantee it.
If you slap a per-unit surcharge on a product, you increase marginal cost by that constant amount. In a competitive industry, such as computer memory, the marginal revenue is equal to the market price. So every firm in the market cuts production to maximize profit. Finally, if marginal cost exceeds marginal revenue at every level of production, then no one will produce your product.
In the case of Rambus memory, you can guarantee low production by simply setting the fee charged greater than the premium generated (as determined by demand) by the technology. In the long run, after new factories are built, and old ones re-fitted, the chip companies choose the type of memory that maximizes profits. Rambus was not that type.
You don't need to collude with other manufacturers to force something off the market. You just need a more profitable alternative.
Slashdot Mirror
The micro-economic argument would go like this:
The cost to produce one additional unit of software (marginal cost) is very near zero. Furthermore, the average cost per unit at higher levels of production is always decreasing. The fixed costs of development are spread over ever increasing copies of software, which each have negligible cost to produce.
Software development is a contestable market. That means that new companies can enter and exit the market at an insignificant cost. (Anyone can write software at home and distribute copies over the Internet.) In a contestable market, if the average cost curve has negative slope where it crosses market demand (guaranteed for digital copies, since the slope is negative everywhere), there is a "natural monopoly". The "natural contestable monopoly" firm must set output and price at the point where their average cost curve crosses market demand, where profits equal zero. At a lower price, the firm takes losses, and at a higher price, it invites competition. Even then, a firm that can incur lower fixed costs (zero for open source) can outcompete the others. The price would tend to move to where marginal cost (near zero) meets demand.
Essentially, profit-seeking companies must innovate first, before a zero-development-cost solution becomes available. They must continue to innovate, and always ensure that the consumers are willing to pay more for higher quality and additional features, otherwise they sell fewer copies.So open-source won't kill the industry. It is the heel-nipping dog that will drive the industry towards more innovation and greater consumer satisfaction. Unfortunately, there is not much room for either profit or error, unless your company has just invented something totally new. In that case, a patent can provide breathing room, though piracy still puts limits on pricing.
Also, though 100 families may become unemployed when an open source project is completed, 100 million can now become more productive at near-zero cost. The hundred can now move on to a new project with no competitors.
I'd say they'll be going in circles around the planet.
The problem with the EM transmission spectrum is not licensed use vs. unlicensed use. It is the fact that EM bandwidth is not ownable. Essentially, the federal government claims ownership over the whole spectrum, and doles it out in bits and pieces via licensing and FCC enforcement actions.
Don't reform the FCC. Auction off frequencies, with permanent ownership rights, to the public!
Because it's too hot out in the sun?
This program could also be linked to a web-searching robot for fact-checking and proper attributions. It could detect plagiarism within seconds, and generate a probability that any given statement is correct.
And then it could be run on Slashdot in lieu of metamoderation.
Gee, I wonder if that has anything to do with being linked by Slashdot...
Psst! You were supposed to post this anonymously!
If they change the method they use to redact text, the newer method could be compared to existing documents redacted using the older method. If the information revealed by analysis of a new redact is not a subset of that revealed by the old method, the total revealed information increases rather than decreases.
Perhaps your view is skewed by your association with the aforementioned prestigious museum? Not all museums are well-supported by foundations and donations. The small, narrow-focus museums have to watch every dime, and sometimes charge admission. It is easier for them to substitute the time value of their [i]volunteers[/i] for the dollar value of their technology. If they can spend 50% as much money on hardware and professional support, and 1000% as much volunteer time in setup and maintenance, they still come out ahead. If some of their volunteers are from Slashdot, so much the better.
The phone analogy is good, but backwards. This situation seems more akin to installing a new payphone in your living room, rather than using a cheap phone from Wal-Mart. The museum in question cannot afford to waste an extra few thousand dollars on features, reliability, and personnel that it doesn't need. They are asking Slashdotters for free help over the Internet, after all.
If there's any chance that it will generate a financial return within 5 years.
With any large advance in technology, there are usually smaller incremental advances that can be made profitable while research continues. Jumping straight to a space elevator with no interim benefits is the equivalent of not manufacturing desktop computers until you can use a 1 GHz+ processor.
If handled correctly, copyrights and patents foster creativity and innovation in the market. If handled incorrectly, they have the opposite effect. Government patent offices do not, in my opinion, handle I.P. correctly.
BTW, there shouldn't be any municipal water supplies. Drinking water companies need not be run by the city, when a for-profit company could do the job. Likewise, patents need not be exclusively administered by one corruptable government office.
The FCC exists on the premise that it owns the EM spectrum. If broadcasters had actual property rights for the frequency they used, they could defend themselves from jamming and interference on their own dime and their own time.
As it is now, the FCC allocates huge chunks of the spectrum for government/military use, and mere slivers for commercial/civilian use. I would rather have more bandwidth available for wireless networking, cell phones, community radio, or any other constructive use than for nefarious killing-oriented purposes, but the FCC is a political entity, subject to the whims of the rulers. They aren't there to protect the spectrum, they are there to protect their revenue. And their revenue comes from big media and politicians, not small businesses and hobbyists.
Anything worthwhile can be paid for by voluntarily invested money instead of tax dollars. And tax dollars are not a fixed pool of funding--a dollar spent on NASA pipe dreams is a dollar taken from the public, not a dollar taken from the military, or any other part of government. Both of those dollars could have been used to fund a private enterprise researching technologies of more immediate utility to humanity.
In other words, if GE wanted to invent superior cabling, I could buy more stock to fund the project, and thus profit from the super-long suspension bridges that would be built. If NASA invented superior cabling, I get to pay more taxes so they can build a space elevator, which I would then be charged additional money to use.
Even if you found some method of oxygenating the blood, it is also important to remove the carbon dioxide. If you also had some method of freeing the oxygen from CO2 and sequestering the carbon, you could substitute the external energy source for breathing. Just remember to watch those batteries.
Electronic voting gives the corrupt more leverage over the process. It is easier for a single person to influence a large number of votes, and harder for that person to be caught.
It is much like a fixed game of gambling. Outside of the realm of electronics, dice can be weighted, decks of cards stacked, and wheels magnetized. Gamblers can inspect the gaming apparatus, to ensure that he is not being cheated.
When the gambling is all digital, it is relatively simple to insert cheating methods, undetectable to the gambler. I did it myself with a programmable calculator in the 9th grade (not for monetary gain, of course). Without examining the underlying code, an inspector cannot know whether the device is fair, or if the cheating code is simply deactivated long enough to pass inspection.
Receipts are usually opposed. The public reason is that a receipt enables vote buying, where the voter provides the receipt to the buyer to prove cooperation.
But that plan does not provide sufficient kickbacks to corporate campaign sponsors!
The process for review would be tightly bound in red tape, and anyone using it would be investigated by the FBI. It would also overrun its budget by 30000% and take 20 years longer than necessary. At the end of that time, it would be obsolete and completely unusable, so of course they would have to do the whole thing over again.
For an interesting read on the future of nanotechnology, try reading Slant by Greg Bear. Interesting topics covered include: the nutritional requirements of nano-machines, waste heat generated by matter conversion, and even a supercomputer based on bacterial conjugation.
Companies manufacture products such that what it costs to produce an additional item (marginal cost) equals the revenue earned by selling that last item (marginal revenue). That level of production maximizes profits--the mathematics guarantee it. If you slap a per-unit surcharge on a product, you increase marginal cost by that constant amount. In a competitive industry, such as computer memory, the marginal revenue is equal to the market price. So every firm in the market cuts production to maximize profit. Finally, if marginal cost exceeds marginal revenue at every level of production, then no one will produce your product. In the case of Rambus memory, you can guarantee low production by simply setting the fee charged greater than the premium generated (as determined by demand) by the technology. In the long run, after new factories are built, and old ones re-fitted, the chip companies choose the type of memory that maximizes profits. Rambus was not that type. You don't need to collude with other manufacturers to force something off the market. You just need a more profitable alternative.