No, because Ted Kaczynski was not a Christian radical, but more like Algore
Ted Kaczynski was raised a christian, and turned to bombing because of his radical philosophical beliefs. The average person called a "radical muslim" suicide bomber was raised a muslim and turned to bombings because they are trying to change political policies and fight an invading army. The religion is similarly relevant in both cases, but applied by the media in the US, in only one case. That was my point.
Well, I think what uspets people is that they don't hear condemnation of this kind of thing *from Muslims*.
Do most people in the US talk to muslims? I hear condemnation of suicide bombings from muslims all the time.
If next month Christian suicide bombers in ten separate incidents killed a lot of non-Christians, I can 100% guarantee you Jerry Falwell would be denouncing them.
As I'm sure you're figured out by now, Falwell died last week. I think your argument is for more muslim televangelists. Sure, there are very vocal TV personalities who refer to themselves as christians and loudly proclaim all sorts of things. Sure televangelists would go on TV and and denounce people who set off bombs, but I bet they would not refer to them as "radical christian bombers" and neither would the papers. Did you hear anyone call the unibomber a "christian radical bomber?" What about the oklahoma bombers? Most of the suicide bombers are not acting for religious reasons so much as political reasons. It is just that religion and politics are as tied together there as they are in the US, but there they admit it.
Why don't you learn to speak arabic and get a satellite dish. Then start watching religious and political programs from the middle east and report back as to how many christians there are on said TV denouncing the actions of the US military in the middle east.
have seen posts violently modded down on/. for evening mentioning the holocaust or holocaust denial.
I think you're inferring emotion, based upon your own preconceptions. Moderation is a numerical system. Things are not "violently" moderated. They might be "quickly" or "repeatedy" moderated. Can you show me an example of a post that mentions the holocaust or holocaust denial and which was not either completely offtopic, or an emotional appeal instead of a logical argument?
Now don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of discussion of the holocaust. My grandfather did not like to talk about the war, but he made a point of telling all of us kids that the deniers were full of crap because he saw the furnaces full of bones and the camps. For the most part, however, the topic is not pertinent to subjects being discussed on Slashdot and an impartial audience probably should mod them down, regardless of nationality.
If you just compare what google is doing to their own users you'll see that they are showing a terrible experience to the users who are Locked-In versus the users who have the choice to use any search service.
What, exactly, locks people into using the Google toolbar pre-installed with the default settings on Dell machines. That is a instance of bundling, but I don't see how it is a lock-in in any way. What prevents users from migrating to a different toolbar or just a different toolbar config? Are you sure you know what "lock-in" is?
Apparently, since the armorer couldn't wear it, or maybe to be more generous because it was necessary to make it lighter so a child could wear it, it was insufficient. There's a big ragged hole in the back and a matching big dent in the chest, where a crossbow bolt went through.
I've seen pictures of full sized armor with the same hole and story. As I understand, armor generally did not stand up to a direct hit from a crossbow bolt, although sometimes it would deflect from angled pieces.
What kind of idiot would walk into a police station and pull a gun?
In the early 70's, guns were not as big of a deal in the US and were not treated with quite the same hysteria they now are. Mr Davis was a former marine and a pizza shop owner who had been shot several times while working. He was one of the pioneers of the bulletproof vest market. There are plenty of videos of him online, shooting himself while wearing a vest, usually with a.38. He did it at conferences around the country. I have little doubt he knew the legal implications, but was willing to suffer them to promote his business and new product. It's called a publicity stunt.
And what kind of police force would let someone walk out of the building after a stunt like that?)
Have you ever seen large police stations. Usually they have a bulletproof glass booth up front with an often unarmed clerk on duty. From the story I heard (from one of his ex-employees) he was arrested on the steps outside.
It sounds like marketing fiction to me.
It could be, but I did not hear it from a marketing person, just from a former manufacturing supervisor. From the other things that are easily verifiable facts, I don't find a lot of reason to doubt the account.
I'll trust it as soon as the guy who invented it straps on a set, and stands about 20 years in front of me....
If you haven't heard about the history of "second chance" one of the very first commercial vest manufacturers, that is basically how they sold it. Walk into a police station, pull a gun, shoot oneself at point blank. Put the gun, vest, and business card on the front desk and walk out. As I understand they arrested the founder (Richard Davis) for firing a pistol within city limits, and placed a huge order. He eventually had to quit doing it because all the bruises from the gunshots were starting to give him heart problems.
This is not an objective list. I was listing the top games by sales, listed in the RTS category. Apparently the classification some people use is different than others. How many games listed that "some group thinks are good" is in no way an objective measure for seeing what games are ported.
Age Of Empires III - Gamespy's Best RTS of 2005, not 2006.
Who cares when Gamespy reviewed it? It was one of the top selling games in 2006.
RTS games actually seem to have low support on the Mac, not sure why
Grab a list of top selling games and figure out which ones have Mac support if you want a measure of is popular games get ported. Filter out the genre however you feel like it.
0 for 3
Your categorization provided one, just one data point you would accept, Company of Heroes. Do you really think that constitutes 0 for 3? Do you really think you can conclude from that one data point that "RTS games actually seem to have low support on the Mac."???
Subscriptions to the services are much lower than expected and lawmakers are concerned that millions of dollars will have gone to waste that could have been better spent on roads or crime-fighting. Satisfaction with the quality of service has also been low, which give some insight into the low adoption rate. Is municipal Wi-Fi just a bad idea, has it been poorly implemented, or is the technology just not there to support such an endeavor?
Internet as a utility needs time to develop if it is ever going to be adopted. Take a look at my situation. I pay for a cable modem and not for a municipal wi-fi connection. Why? Well, because I occasionally like to watch television and television service is bundled with internet service. If I buy them separately I'm paying a whole lot of extra cash. What would make me change my mind? Well, if I could rent legal TV episodes over IP for a very, very low price akin to that portion of what it costs to see them on cable TV. Until that time, however, why should I pay extra?
Plumbing is a service, but pipes are a product. If you have hired a plumber to install pipes in your home during initial construction, the plumber is providing a service, but the end product is a house with plumbing.
Plumbing is the creative configuration of pipes, solder, glue, valves, etc. to create a system of pipes that makes a house better. Programming is the creative configuring of bits within a computer to create a program that makes a computer work better.
Now let's try applying this to software. You hire a programmer to write code for your project during initial development. The programmer is providing a service, but the end product is an executable file with a specified behaviour. The marginal cost of producing an additional executable file with identical behaviour is ZERO, because the programmer or the secretary or the computer copies the bits from one place in storage to another in a matter of minutes, *without* requiring the code to be designed/written/tested a second time.
So, the cost of making a copy of the plumbers plans is also zero, yet it is still a traditional service. I don't see how any of your points show that programming is not a service and in some way does not fit into a free market.
Do tell me. We shopped around to hire someone to improve Linux. We hired them, they did the work, and we paid them. How is that nay different from a market perspective, than hiring someone to wash my car or sing me a song?
But the *extra cost* to create the second piece of software is entirely unrelated!
Ahh, but this is the fundamental flaw in your argument. There is no "extra cost" for us to create a second copy of the software. It is GPL licensed and cost us nothing. What you're arguing against is copyright law applied to charging for each copy of software, but that is NOT an inherent property of software and does not even apply to much of the software in use today.
If people were able to copy and paste a house onto your property without damaging or even inconveniencing the original house, the housing market would crash overnight because there would no longer be any scarcity.
Yes, and in my opinion that would be a great thing. You fail to show how an item that is not scarce cannot fit within traditional capitalism. Air is free, because it is not scarce. That does not mean that a service where people follow me around with fans, moving that air cannot be capitalism or how air itself somehow does not fit into the free market.
If you put infinite supply up against finite demand, the standard supply/demand curve states that the cost of the product itself should be zero.
Exactly right. The Linux software that was produced when we hired those guys costs exactly zero dollars. It is GPL and free for everyone to copy. The service of programming the code, however, still cost money and still fits within the free market where people trade both goods and services.
If you want to sell support contracts, that's fine, but don't try to tell me that bits can be treated like houses.
I never said bits were a commodity. I said software is developed as a service in many cases and that service called "programming" fits in the traditional free market.
I have to wonder why Blizzard consistently releases their titles for Mac.
Money.
I buy all their games as a result, but what's their motivation?
Money.
(surely the sales are far far lower).
Sales are lower? Lower than what, the number of potential buyers if they don't support the Mac?
Do you have any doubt that Startcraft 2 will be among the top 20 titles of the year? Blizzard doesn't have any doubt. Now take a look at the top 20 titles of 2006. How many of them currently offer a Mac version? Gee, pretty much all of them do. Why do you suppose that is? Maybe because it is profitable?
The real question is "why wouldn't a develop make a Mac version?" The answer is, it costs sore up front to build nice, portable code. If the initial investment is a big concern and you don't know if there will be a payoff, it sometimes makes sense to cut corners and develop just for DirectX+Windows. Then, if your game is a flop, you've lost less money. If your game is a success, you can shell out to port the code. The thing is, this latter method, costs more money overall than just writing portable code. Thus, any company that is sure their game will be successful (Blizzard, Id, etc.) tend to plan for the Mac version from the onset. There are a few exceptions to this rule, almost all of whom are owned by Microsoft.
That's not marginal cost; that is a service/maintenance cost. Marginal cost is the increase in costs for *producing* (not fixing!) an extra unit. It's an entirely different measurement, and is a well-defined business term.
That is exactly my point. Plumbing is a service... just like programming is a service. You can pay a person to fix pipes or to write code. As such, programming software fits perfectly in classic economics and capitalism. Heck, we just hired a bunch of programmers to make some improvements to Linux the other day. It is a service and it creates software, ergo software does not inherently violate the idea of a free market, since the free market is trading goods and services.
What breaks the idea of a free market is restricting copying things by law and selling the rights to make copies. That is called "copyright" not "software." Software demonstrably fits within a free market the same way plumbed pipes do.
Well, technically it does - at least if the floor is ever in use. You can calculate the hygiene and accident risks associated with having an unclean floor (effeciency reduction, sick leaves, lawsuit costs, etc.) and the value of having it be clean is presumably the absolute value of the cost of that risk.
By the same logic, you can estimate the same financial risks associated with having or not having a given programming service implemented for some purpose. The point is neither has any inherent value, only value as we assign it or as we assess it in regard to other financial concerns. To take the analogy a step further, think of wallpapering services. Does having wallpaper on your walls have an inherent value in dollars? You might estimate you'll get more sales because you business looks more upscale, but that is simply a related risk/reward. I'm not trying to make the business case that programming or wallpapering or plumbing cannot lead to profit. It certainly can. I'm not trying to make the argument programs or wallpapered walls or functional pipes cannot increase profit, as they certainly can. The point I'm making is that there is no inherent value in the result of the service, such that it is an exception to traditional capitalism.
The GP stated that the _marginal_ cost is 0, not that the entire cost or even the amortized cost is zero.
What is the marginal cost of hiring a plumber to fix your broken pipe? You pay once and then tomorrow it still is fixed, for free. The next day, yup still fixed. They day after that, yup still fixed.
Thus the GP is exactly right, and software itself breaks the current economic model.
The GGP poster claimed "Software itself violates the free market." That is pure bull. Software violates the free market the same way as plumbing or any other service violates the free market.
You're confused by the fact that laws are used to apply a different business model to the service of programming than are applied to the service of plumbing. If plumbers passed a law that said every time they fixed a pipe you had to pay them a fee for every day it stayed fixed, and then built their business models on a $5 fee for coming out, but $100 a year for every year thereafter that it stayed fixed, then plumbing would be in the same boat as most commercial software today. That no more means that plumbing inherently breaks the free market any more than anything else. Copyright breaks the free market, not software.
No it doesn't. Artificially limiting the distribution of software via copyright, might, but software itself does not. Software development as a service (as open source business models use it) is classic capitalism. It is only capitalism as it applies to services (programming) as opposed to a commodity.
Thus it has no value.
Having a clean floor has no inherent value, but still capitalism accommodates the selling of cleaning services, just fine.
Listen, I have a couple of minutes, then I'm off to the pub. I'm not going to waste that time trying to decipher a fairly long chunk of greyed-out text because you didn't preview. Reformat it and repost if you want me to respond and I'll get back to you tomorrow. I don't think it's too unreasonable to expect you to at least look at your post before submitting.
Please try again, this time using the "preview" button. Your overuse of the "quote" tag, probably through a failure to close one, has made your formatting too cumbersome bother reading.
Paranoia is an unreasonable fear. When Einstein said government agents were following him, that didn't show he was paranoid, it showed he could reason. They were following him, day and night as the records have shown. People assume MS is acting in their own best business interests and probably working a PR angle while trying to lock-in users because they've only done it over and over and over again. Assuming they are probably doing it now is called "experience."
Could it be that they see the writting on the wall, that ODF is the way of the future and are willing to accept that and move on, no hard feelings?
Microsoft is a corporation with a culture. We can count on them to work towards making money through monopoly abuse, because that is their business method. Sure they'll let MSOffice work with ODF, kinda sorta. These are the same people who can't even implement HTML to the standard though and always, always inject proprietary add ons to every standard they touch to try to lock users in.
I'm sure there are no hard feelings because this isn't about feeling. It is about business. MS is here to take as much money from you for as little work as possible. It is a competition of sorts. That is what any reasonable person should expect of them. No one assumes this is altruism and they shouldn't. This is MS angling for more of your money, and that is why people are evaluating it, because we're tired of giving MS money because they cleverly broke something. We want them to actually do work that benefits us, the customer, or get out of our way for a business who is willing to do that.
Are you aware that Word 2007 supports ODF? Not out of the box, but it's on the list of supported add-ons...
Yes. The thing is, the move to ODF is usually motivated by a desire for vendor choice in office suites, and that usually means someone has a pain point that is the current version of MSOffice not being the right fit for at least some applications within the organization. MS would rather those people stay MSOffice customers because that is in MS's best interest, even if it obviously is not in the customer's best interest.
Why would they do this?
First MS did not "do this" several plug-ins were developed by a third parties like Sun, sometimes in cooperation with MS. MS supports them for two reasons. First, to do otherwise is yet another violation of antitrust law, but one which would highlight the reason everyone should be pushing for ODF in the first place. Two, MS needs some ODF support in order to be eligible for certain bids they really, really don't want to lose to OpenOffice. MS's goal is to keep MSOffice on top. Lock-in file formats are a method of doing that. They aren't willing to lose the former to maintain the latter.
ODF isn't that popular yet, but it's gaining exposure. So... add support for it, then add it to the list of official formats you can use.
MS's goal is to keep MSOffice used by everyone. They want to do that, however, not through making it the best product for everyone's needs, but by making it hard for people to switch to something else. File formats are their normal lock-in. MS could make ODF a first class citizen and save to it, by default, with no need for added downloads. They don want to do that unless they are forced to. They'd much rather keep as many road bloack between users switching to another program as possible. This is bad for end users because in some cases other tools suit their needs better.
(support all the same formats, support a couple it doesn't, and still have things like better Accessibility support, and it gets a lot easier to convince governents and companies not to switch)
Ahh, but here's the thing. All "support" is not created equal. MS wants a bullet point that says "ODF support" so they can win contracts. They'd rather, however, that it was just a bullet point and was as hard to install and use as possible to still get that bullet point, all the while pushing people to something(OpenXML) that sounds like it will provide the same benefits of a standard, but in reality is just slightly less of a lock in that.doc.
Admittedly, they could do this without standardization of ODF, but there's no point in fighting it and a bit to be gained from supporting it. There's nothing wrong with the standard; to Microsoft it's just another format you can use their software for.
There is a lot wrong with ODF from MS's perspective. It removes their.doc lock-in completely and gives people a way to move to other things. That potentially costs them money and means they have to spend money to improve MSOffice and compete on level ground with others. MS will move to ODF when they have to or when MS Office is no longer the biggest chunk of the market. Until then, they want lock-in and that means undermining ODF.
I disagree. I've followed this battle in pretty close detail. My observation is that Microsoft has only stood in the way of ODF being adopted to the exclusion of any other format. They seem to be perfectly happy with any case where ODF and other standards being allowed.
ODF is not supported by MS in Word natively. Thus, ODF adoption usually means MS is losing a sale. Further, it means it is easier for their customers to migrate away from MS Office. You really don't think MS is doing anything to stop people from moving to ODF. You don't think they're offering price cuts to stop migrations away from MSOffice to say Openffice and ODF?
I'm not sure what you mean by this. I highly doubt your premise. Sure, Microsoft wants standards to benefit itself, but you claim that Microsoft is gainst anyone else benefitting from them.
Open standards traditionally bring certain benefits including:
competative vendor bids
wider selection of tools
no need to maintain compatibility with other tools/versions of tools
no vendor lock-in
All of these things are benefits MS would prefer their customers did not have, because MS is overwhelmingly the leader in the market, possibly (probably) to the extent of weilding monopoly influence in the word processor market.
Funny you should mention that. How many different standards are there for bolts? Several.
Umm, what is the point of your comment? You're just repeating exactly what I present an example of. The point is, when you talk about ISO and SAE standards for bolts, you're comparing similar items from the perspective of the industry and of the end user. When you're talking about ODF and and OpenXML you're talking about items that are very, very different in the benefits they bring to the industry and end user. Now it would probably be better for the industry and end user if either SAE or ISO won the war and was the only remaining standard for that type of bolt size, but it doesn't much matter which one from an objective perspective. Both would and currently do provide similar benefits. This is absolutely positively not the case when comparing ODF and OpenXML.
ODF is no more "open" than OXML is.
Yes, it is.
It too is covered by patents (and required a patent covenant by Sun, just like OXML).
The restrictions needed to get patent protection from Sun are the same as PDF from Adobe, you just have to follow the spec. That is not the case with MS. Technically, there is nothing stopping MS from releasing a new version of OpenXML and telling all current software vendors implementing it that they are no longer in compliance with the license since they implement the "old" version and shutting down each and every competitor. That is not the case with ODF.
It too is largely championed by a single organization (in this case Sun), with several other organizations involved.
No, ODF is currently implemented by software from dozens of companies and no one company can stop another from implementing the spec. So long as they are following the spec there is nothing Sun can do, including releasing a new version of the spec, to stop someone like the WrodPerfect team from implementing it.
BTW, the very definition of a patent means the information is not secret. You might want to re-evaluate your argument.
Those were separate list items. Note the comma. OpenXML is encumbered by patents that can still be brought to bear. Additionally, OpenXML is tied by trade secrets. Parts of the spec refer to trade secrets and copyrighted implementations of other works. For example, in some instances it refers to behavior "like Word version X" but since only MS has the source to Word version X and it is both copyrighted and a trade secret, no one else can fully implement that part of the spec.
Microsoft hasn't stood in the way of ODF at all. They just think there's room for more than one standard.
Actually, Microsoft does stand in the way of ODF adoption, just not of it becoming a recognized and official standard. I can see some good reasons from a PR standpoint to go this route. With Microsoft, you have to be very careful with the word "standard." MS is all in favor of standardization. They fight tooth and nail against anything that gives users most the benefits of open standards. When most people think of a standard, they think of something like SAE bolt specifications; something anyone can make standardized for the purpose of allowing interoperability. Everyone can see the benefit of such a standard for the construction industries, manufacturers, and end users.
When MS talks about standards, however, they are more commonly referring to something where they are the sole gatekeeper, and often the sole creator of items that follow said "standard." OpenXML, for example, is not a "standard" in the same way ODF is and it sure doesn't bring end users the lion's share of the benefits normally associated with what we call an open standard. This is because of the application of patents, the ties to secret information, because it is copyrighted, and because MS has a monopoly in the desktop OS space, a "standard" from MS is not just a "standard" as it would be referred to in most other industries. You could call ISO 898, industry members believing there is room for more than one bolt standard, because that is what ISO 898 is, another standard equivalent to SAE. Saying, however, that OpenXML, is just another standard is misleading to the majority of people, because openXML and ODF are not equal, in terms of what sort of standardization benefits they bring to the industry.
Slashdot Mirror
Ted Kaczynski was raised a christian, and turned to bombing because of his radical philosophical beliefs. The average person called a "radical muslim" suicide bomber was raised a muslim and turned to bombings because they are trying to change political policies and fight an invading army. The religion is similarly relevant in both cases, but applied by the media in the US, in only one case. That was my point.
Do most people in the US talk to muslims? I hear condemnation of suicide bombings from muslims all the time.
If next month Christian suicide bombers in ten separate incidents killed a lot of non-Christians, I can 100% guarantee you Jerry Falwell would be denouncing them.As I'm sure you're figured out by now, Falwell died last week. I think your argument is for more muslim televangelists. Sure, there are very vocal TV personalities who refer to themselves as christians and loudly proclaim all sorts of things. Sure televangelists would go on TV and and denounce people who set off bombs, but I bet they would not refer to them as "radical christian bombers" and neither would the papers. Did you hear anyone call the unibomber a "christian radical bomber?" What about the oklahoma bombers? Most of the suicide bombers are not acting for religious reasons so much as political reasons. It is just that religion and politics are as tied together there as they are in the US, but there they admit it.
Why don't you learn to speak arabic and get a satellite dish. Then start watching religious and political programs from the middle east and report back as to how many christians there are on said TV denouncing the actions of the US military in the middle east.
I think you're inferring emotion, based upon your own preconceptions. Moderation is a numerical system. Things are not "violently" moderated. They might be "quickly" or "repeatedy" moderated. Can you show me an example of a post that mentions the holocaust or holocaust denial and which was not either completely offtopic, or an emotional appeal instead of a logical argument?
Now don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of discussion of the holocaust. My grandfather did not like to talk about the war, but he made a point of telling all of us kids that the deniers were full of crap because he saw the furnaces full of bones and the camps. For the most part, however, the topic is not pertinent to subjects being discussed on Slashdot and an impartial audience probably should mod them down, regardless of nationality.
What, exactly, locks people into using the Google toolbar pre-installed with the default settings on Dell machines. That is a instance of bundling, but I don't see how it is a lock-in in any way. What prevents users from migrating to a different toolbar or just a different toolbar config? Are you sure you know what "lock-in" is?
The most fatal job in the US is the military, by a good measure. Food delivery comes in at a surprisingly high number 7 though.
BTW, and probably OT, did some Pin Shooting over the weekend - my second time before a table. Great fun!I haven't done that since I was a kid. It was a lot of fun though. It's not too offtopic since the sport originated with Mr. Davis's annual event.
I've seen pictures of full sized armor with the same hole and story. As I understand, armor generally did not stand up to a direct hit from a crossbow bolt, although sometimes it would deflect from angled pieces.
In the early 70's, guns were not as big of a deal in the US and were not treated with quite the same hysteria they now are. Mr Davis was a former marine and a pizza shop owner who had been shot several times while working. He was one of the pioneers of the bulletproof vest market. There are plenty of videos of him online, shooting himself while wearing a vest, usually with a .38. He did it at conferences around the country. I have little doubt he knew the legal implications, but was willing to suffer them to promote his business and new product. It's called a publicity stunt.
And what kind of police force would let someone walk out of the building after a stunt like that?)Have you ever seen large police stations. Usually they have a bulletproof glass booth up front with an often unarmed clerk on duty. From the story I heard (from one of his ex-employees) he was arrested on the steps outside.
It sounds like marketing fiction to me.It could be, but I did not hear it from a marketing person, just from a former manufacturing supervisor. From the other things that are easily verifiable facts, I don't find a lot of reason to doubt the account.
If you haven't heard about the history of "second chance" one of the very first commercial vest manufacturers, that is basically how they sold it. Walk into a police station, pull a gun, shoot oneself at point blank. Put the gun, vest, and business card on the front desk and walk out. As I understand they arrested the founder (Richard Davis) for firing a pistol within city limits, and placed a huge order. He eventually had to quit doing it because all the bruises from the gunshots were starting to give him heart problems.
The "private party" in the Washtenaw wireless project is 20-20 Communications on 4th street in Ann Arbor.
This is not an objective list. I was listing the top games by sales, listed in the RTS category. Apparently the classification some people use is different than others. How many games listed that "some group thinks are good" is in no way an objective measure for seeing what games are ported.
Age Of Empires III - Gamespy's Best RTS of 2005, not 2006.Who cares when Gamespy reviewed it? It was one of the top selling games in 2006.
RTS games actually seem to have low support on the Mac, not sure whyGrab a list of top selling games and figure out which ones have Mac support if you want a measure of is popular games get ported. Filter out the genre however you feel like it.
0 for 3Your categorization provided one, just one data point you would accept, Company of Heroes. Do you really think that constitutes 0 for 3? Do you really think you can conclude from that one data point that "RTS games actually seem to have low support on the Mac."???
Internet as a utility needs time to develop if it is ever going to be adopted. Take a look at my situation. I pay for a cable modem and not for a municipal wi-fi connection. Why? Well, because I occasionally like to watch television and television service is bundled with internet service. If I buy them separately I'm paying a whole lot of extra cash. What would make me change my mind? Well, if I could rent legal TV episodes over IP for a very, very low price akin to that portion of what it costs to see them on cable TV. Until that time, however, why should I pay extra?
The top 10 games of 2006 list includes the following RTS games:
Hmm, that's three for three. I think your premise is a bit off. Almost all popular Windows games get Mac versions these days because it is profitable.
Plumbing is the creative configuration of pipes, solder, glue, valves, etc. to create a system of pipes that makes a house better. Programming is the creative configuring of bits within a computer to create a program that makes a computer work better.
Now let's try applying this to software. You hire a programmer to write code for your project during initial development. The programmer is providing a service, but the end product is an executable file with a specified behaviour. The marginal cost of producing an additional executable file with identical behaviour is ZERO, because the programmer or the secretary or the computer copies the bits from one place in storage to another in a matter of minutes, *without* requiring the code to be designed/written/tested a second time.So, the cost of making a copy of the plumbers plans is also zero, yet it is still a traditional service. I don't see how any of your points show that programming is not a service and in some way does not fit into a free market.
Do tell me. We shopped around to hire someone to improve Linux. We hired them, they did the work, and we paid them. How is that nay different from a market perspective, than hiring someone to wash my car or sing me a song?
But the *extra cost* to create the second piece of software is entirely unrelated!Ahh, but this is the fundamental flaw in your argument. There is no "extra cost" for us to create a second copy of the software. It is GPL licensed and cost us nothing. What you're arguing against is copyright law applied to charging for each copy of software, but that is NOT an inherent property of software and does not even apply to much of the software in use today.
If people were able to copy and paste a house onto your property without damaging or even inconveniencing the original house, the housing market would crash overnight because there would no longer be any scarcity.Yes, and in my opinion that would be a great thing. You fail to show how an item that is not scarce cannot fit within traditional capitalism. Air is free, because it is not scarce. That does not mean that a service where people follow me around with fans, moving that air cannot be capitalism or how air itself somehow does not fit into the free market.
If you put infinite supply up against finite demand, the standard supply/demand curve states that the cost of the product itself should be zero.Exactly right. The Linux software that was produced when we hired those guys costs exactly zero dollars. It is GPL and free for everyone to copy. The service of programming the code, however, still cost money and still fits within the free market where people trade both goods and services.
If you want to sell support contracts, that's fine, but don't try to tell me that bits can be treated like houses.I never said bits were a commodity. I said software is developed as a service in many cases and that service called "programming" fits in the traditional free market.
Money.
I buy all their games as a result, but what's their motivation?Money.
(surely the sales are far far lower).Sales are lower? Lower than what, the number of potential buyers if they don't support the Mac?
Do you have any doubt that Startcraft 2 will be among the top 20 titles of the year? Blizzard doesn't have any doubt. Now take a look at the top 20 titles of 2006. How many of them currently offer a Mac version? Gee, pretty much all of them do. Why do you suppose that is? Maybe because it is profitable?
The real question is "why wouldn't a develop make a Mac version?" The answer is, it costs sore up front to build nice, portable code. If the initial investment is a big concern and you don't know if there will be a payoff, it sometimes makes sense to cut corners and develop just for DirectX+Windows. Then, if your game is a flop, you've lost less money. If your game is a success, you can shell out to port the code. The thing is, this latter method, costs more money overall than just writing portable code. Thus, any company that is sure their game will be successful (Blizzard, Id, etc.) tend to plan for the Mac version from the onset. There are a few exceptions to this rule, almost all of whom are owned by Microsoft.
That is exactly my point. Plumbing is a service... just like programming is a service. You can pay a person to fix pipes or to write code. As such, programming software fits perfectly in classic economics and capitalism. Heck, we just hired a bunch of programmers to make some improvements to Linux the other day. It is a service and it creates software, ergo software does not inherently violate the idea of a free market, since the free market is trading goods and services.
What breaks the idea of a free market is restricting copying things by law and selling the rights to make copies. That is called "copyright" not "software." Software demonstrably fits within a free market the same way plumbed pipes do.
I've never seen a definition of capitalism that specifically excludes services. I have seen definitions that refer to "goods and services."
By the same logic, you can estimate the same financial risks associated with having or not having a given programming service implemented for some purpose. The point is neither has any inherent value, only value as we assign it or as we assess it in regard to other financial concerns. To take the analogy a step further, think of wallpapering services. Does having wallpaper on your walls have an inherent value in dollars? You might estimate you'll get more sales because you business looks more upscale, but that is simply a related risk/reward. I'm not trying to make the business case that programming or wallpapering or plumbing cannot lead to profit. It certainly can. I'm not trying to make the argument programs or wallpapered walls or functional pipes cannot increase profit, as they certainly can. The point I'm making is that there is no inherent value in the result of the service, such that it is an exception to traditional capitalism.
What is the marginal cost of hiring a plumber to fix your broken pipe? You pay once and then tomorrow it still is fixed, for free. The next day, yup still fixed. They day after that, yup still fixed.
Thus the GP is exactly right, and software itself breaks the current economic model.The GGP poster claimed "Software itself violates the free market." That is pure bull. Software violates the free market the same way as plumbing or any other service violates the free market.
You're confused by the fact that laws are used to apply a different business model to the service of programming than are applied to the service of plumbing. If plumbers passed a law that said every time they fixed a pipe you had to pay them a fee for every day it stayed fixed, and then built their business models on a $5 fee for coming out, but $100 a year for every year thereafter that it stayed fixed, then plumbing would be in the same boat as most commercial software today. That no more means that plumbing inherently breaks the free market any more than anything else. Copyright breaks the free market, not software.
No it doesn't. Artificially limiting the distribution of software via copyright, might, but software itself does not. Software development as a service (as open source business models use it) is classic capitalism. It is only capitalism as it applies to services (programming) as opposed to a commodity.
Thus it has no value.Having a clean floor has no inherent value, but still capitalism accommodates the selling of cleaning services, just fine.
Listen, I have a couple of minutes, then I'm off to the pub. I'm not going to waste that time trying to decipher a fairly long chunk of greyed-out text because you didn't preview. Reformat it and repost if you want me to respond and I'll get back to you tomorrow. I don't think it's too unreasonable to expect you to at least look at your post before submitting.
Please try again, this time using the "preview" button. Your overuse of the "quote" tag, probably through a failure to close one, has made your formatting too cumbersome bother reading.
Paranoia is an unreasonable fear. When Einstein said government agents were following him, that didn't show he was paranoid, it showed he could reason. They were following him, day and night as the records have shown. People assume MS is acting in their own best business interests and probably working a PR angle while trying to lock-in users because they've only done it over and over and over again. Assuming they are probably doing it now is called "experience."
Could it be that they see the writting on the wall, that ODF is the way of the future and are willing to accept that and move on, no hard feelings?Microsoft is a corporation with a culture. We can count on them to work towards making money through monopoly abuse, because that is their business method. Sure they'll let MSOffice work with ODF, kinda sorta. These are the same people who can't even implement HTML to the standard though and always, always inject proprietary add ons to every standard they touch to try to lock users in.
I'm sure there are no hard feelings because this isn't about feeling. It is about business. MS is here to take as much money from you for as little work as possible. It is a competition of sorts. That is what any reasonable person should expect of them. No one assumes this is altruism and they shouldn't. This is MS angling for more of your money, and that is why people are evaluating it, because we're tired of giving MS money because they cleverly broke something. We want them to actually do work that benefits us, the customer, or get out of our way for a business who is willing to do that.
Yes. The thing is, the move to ODF is usually motivated by a desire for vendor choice in office suites, and that usually means someone has a pain point that is the current version of MSOffice not being the right fit for at least some applications within the organization. MS would rather those people stay MSOffice customers because that is in MS's best interest, even if it obviously is not in the customer's best interest.
Why would they do this?First MS did not "do this" several plug-ins were developed by a third parties like Sun, sometimes in cooperation with MS. MS supports them for two reasons. First, to do otherwise is yet another violation of antitrust law, but one which would highlight the reason everyone should be pushing for ODF in the first place. Two, MS needs some ODF support in order to be eligible for certain bids they really, really don't want to lose to OpenOffice. MS's goal is to keep MSOffice on top. Lock-in file formats are a method of doing that. They aren't willing to lose the former to maintain the latter.
ODF isn't that popular yet, but it's gaining exposure. So... add support for it, then add it to the list of official formats you can use.MS's goal is to keep MSOffice used by everyone. They want to do that, however, not through making it the best product for everyone's needs, but by making it hard for people to switch to something else. File formats are their normal lock-in. MS could make ODF a first class citizen and save to it, by default, with no need for added downloads. They don want to do that unless they are forced to. They'd much rather keep as many road bloack between users switching to another program as possible. This is bad for end users because in some cases other tools suit their needs better.
(support all the same formats, support a couple it doesn't, and still have things like better Accessibility support, and it gets a lot easier to convince governents and companies not to switch)Ahh, but here's the thing. All "support" is not created equal. MS wants a bullet point that says "ODF support" so they can win contracts. They'd rather, however, that it was just a bullet point and was as hard to install and use as possible to still get that bullet point, all the while pushing people to something(OpenXML) that sounds like it will provide the same benefits of a standard, but in reality is just slightly less of a lock in that .doc.
Admittedly, they could do this without standardization of ODF, but there's no point in fighting it and a bit to be gained from supporting it. There's nothing wrong with the standard; to Microsoft it's just another format you can use their software for.There is a lot wrong with ODF from MS's perspective. It removes their .doc lock-in completely and gives people a way to move to other things. That potentially costs them money and means they have to spend money to improve MSOffice and compete on level ground with others. MS will move to ODF when they have to or when MS Office is no longer the biggest chunk of the market. Until then, they want lock-in and that means undermining ODF.
I disagree. I've followed this battle in pretty close detail. My observation is that Microsoft has only stood in the way of ODF being adopted to the exclusion of any other format. They seem to be perfectly happy with any case where ODF and other standards being allowed.
ODF is not supported by MS in Word natively. Thus, ODF adoption usually means MS is losing a sale. Further, it means it is easier for their customers to migrate away from MS Office. You really don't think MS is doing anything to stop people from moving to ODF. You don't think they're offering price cuts to stop migrations away from MSOffice to say Openffice and ODF?
I'm not sure what you mean by this. I highly doubt your premise. Sure, Microsoft wants standards to benefit itself, but you claim that Microsoft is gainst anyone else benefitting from them.
Open standards traditionally bring certain benefits including:
All of these things are benefits MS would prefer their customers did not have, because MS is overwhelmingly the leader in the market, possibly (probably) to the extent of weilding monopoly influence in the word processor market.
Funny you should mention that. How many different standards are there for bolts? Several.
Umm, what is the point of your comment? You're just repeating exactly what I present an example of. The point is, when you talk about ISO and SAE standards for bolts, you're comparing similar items from the perspective of the industry and of the end user. When you're talking about ODF and and OpenXML you're talking about items that are very, very different in the benefits they bring to the industry and end user. Now it would probably be better for the industry and end user if either SAE or ISO won the war and was the only remaining standard for that type of bolt size, but it doesn't much matter which one from an objective perspective. Both would and currently do provide similar benefits. This is absolutely positively not the case when comparing ODF and OpenXML.
ODF is no more "open" than OXML is.
Yes, it is.
It too is covered by patents (and required a patent covenant by Sun, just like OXML).
The restrictions needed to get patent protection from Sun are the same as PDF from Adobe, you just have to follow the spec. That is not the case with MS. Technically, there is nothing stopping MS from releasing a new version of OpenXML and telling all current software vendors implementing it that they are no longer in compliance with the license since they implement the "old" version and shutting down each and every competitor. That is not the case with ODF.
It too is largely championed by a single organization (in this case Sun), with several other organizations involved.
No, ODF is currently implemented by software from dozens of companies and no one company can stop another from implementing the spec. So long as they are following the spec there is nothing Sun can do, including releasing a new version of the spec, to stop someone like the WrodPerfect team from implementing it.
BTW, the very definition of a patent means the information is not secret. You might want to re-evaluate your argument.
Those were separate list items. Note the comma. OpenXML is encumbered by patents that can still be brought to bear. Additionally, OpenXML is tied by trade secrets. Parts of the spec refer to trade secrets and copyrighted implementations of other works. For example, in some instances it refers to behavior "like Word version X" but since only MS has the source to Word version X and it is both copyrighted and a trade secret, no one else can fully implement that part of the spec.
Ok, then you should
Actually, Microsoft does stand in the way of ODF adoption, just not of it becoming a recognized and official standard. I can see some good reasons from a PR standpoint to go this route. With Microsoft, you have to be very careful with the word "standard." MS is all in favor of standardization. They fight tooth and nail against anything that gives users most the benefits of open standards. When most people think of a standard, they think of something like SAE bolt specifications; something anyone can make standardized for the purpose of allowing interoperability. Everyone can see the benefit of such a standard for the construction industries, manufacturers, and end users.
When MS talks about standards, however, they are more commonly referring to something where they are the sole gatekeeper, and often the sole creator of items that follow said "standard." OpenXML, for example, is not a "standard" in the same way ODF is and it sure doesn't bring end users the lion's share of the benefits normally associated with what we call an open standard. This is because of the application of patents, the ties to secret information, because it is copyrighted, and because MS has a monopoly in the desktop OS space, a "standard" from MS is not just a "standard" as it would be referred to in most other industries. You could call ISO 898, industry members believing there is room for more than one bolt standard, because that is what ISO 898 is, another standard equivalent to SAE. Saying, however, that OpenXML, is just another standard is misleading to the majority of people, because openXML and ODF are not equal, in terms of what sort of standardization benefits they bring to the industry.