This is what M$ has been moving towards for many years - subscription services. They've voiced their "concern" that people don't pay continuously several times. They've tried projects with M$ Office of that kind. Now they found their prey: Gamers.
Expect more of the same. Billy and Balmer have been having wet dreams about this for at least 10 years - pay for everything. I wouldn't be surprised if you'd have to pay for your save-game slots in a year or two.
I propose that they aren't. Many more involved parties profit more from the ongoing conflict than from its resolution. That includes especially the lawyers, but also law enforcement, a large number of institutes, think-tanks, industry associations, etc. and of course the media which gets a fairly reliable source of news every now and then.
That's true for both, the war on drugs and the copyright war.
I'll never understand the "I steal so I can play without the disk!" mentality that some people have. It's not like it's that hard to change disks.
Right, and that's not what it's about. Read on...
When games first started coming out on CD, they all required you to have the game disk in the drive.
Correct, but something important has changed since then. Read on...
"See, judge, I wanna make my life slightly more convienent, at the cost of Ubisoft's business."
Convenient, yes. At the cost of someone else? No. This is about the following scenario:
Many, many people's main machine is a notebook these days (that's what's changed, point 2). It's not about switching the CD, it's about whether or not you have to lug around a box of CDs in addition to the notebook, power plug and assorted other hardware you have. It reduces the value of having a portable system at all (that's why we prefer not having to use the CDs, point 1).
And many of these complaints are from people who actually bought the games, so Ubisoft (or whoever else) already got their business.
However, study some business economics and have your ears wide open when the topic is "monopoly profits". The thing about them is that the profit of the monopoly is much, much lower than the damage it causes to the general public. For every $ that Bill has made, he's done 2, 3, maybe 5 $ worth of damage to the public.
In other words: Yes, he gives a billion or two away. That is a) our money and b) we'd have several times that if it weren't for him. Which leads to c) in a fair market, without a monopoly, the total sum profit of all participants would be much higher, and if even half of them would give as much of their share as Bill does, then the total given would be more.
He's still a robber baron. And his donations are probably just a way to a) wash his image clean and b) get tax breaks.
I agree. I have a very deep-seated dislike for M$, but for a number of reasons they definitely should be treated fairly - if only to lower the chances for a successful appeal.
However, I also believe they should be treated fair, but harsh. They have done an enornemous(sp?) amount of damage to others, and if they are convicted, it is time that they pay society back what they've taken.
That being said, until I get something other then vague generalities about "documents", it's going to be impossible to convince me that anything unfair is actually occurring.
Exactly. They are being treated fairly. They just claim that they aren't. Just their latest attempt at making the EU fall over like the US did. They hope that somewhere, someone will whisper in the right ears that after those accusations, the punishment should not be too stiff, because it would confirm the (baseless) accusations.
Come on, people. Stop wondering, it's obvious why M$ is doing this. It's the same old game again. They already ship IE with the OS, but that's just not enough to beat gmail. So they need to find a way to ship hotmail with the OS. Obviously, a dedicated, pre-installed client, sold as the latest and greatest (that's why they don't just use Outlook) and set up as the default e-mail handler, is the answer.
Patterns. M$ doesn't innovate, not even business strategies. This is just the same old game once more.
The funny thing is that the studios would almost certainly see a lot less actual piracy if they would stop having their DVD presses run cheaply in China and other places where it's sometimes difficult to find a legit DVD.
I guess they added up the figures and came to the conclusion it's still cheaper doing it that way. They only fake the losses when they need to force through some new law.
the people that are making the major software decisions are at best technically inept, and at worst blissfully clueless.
You got your problem right there. Why are these people allowed to make these choices? That is the real question, not "how do we fool them? Oh wait, by dressing just like them". That's business, not problem-solving.
Shower. Shave. Buy some button up shirts and a pair of slacks. From my experience, this makes all the difference in the world. Like it or not - it's the way the game is played.
But it's a multiplayer game where the rules can be modded. We're modding the rules. During the dot-com era, we were quite successful at doing so. Right now, we got gibbed and are still busy gathering the powerups after the respawn, but sooner or later we'll be back.
Given that it's the corporations who'd profit quite considerably from adopting Free Software more, and no so much the other way around, I'd say he has it backwards:
It's the outdated and irrational reliance on basing technical judgement calls on clothes instead of technology that is holding the business world back in their adoption of Free Software.
I suspect all these countries that go after MS still have MASSIVE installed bases of MS software. Are all these fines just a round about way of getting lower license costs?
Only in the same way that going after drug dealers is a way to get cheaper sports cars onto the market. In other words: Yes, if you insist on some really convoluted thinking, you can construct that being the case. For everyone who likes Ockham's Razor better, the case is simple close-and-shut: Criminal company breaks law and gets sued.
However, grandparent's argument was another one: The more "fair" a war is, i.e. the closer you are to having just a 50/50 chance of winning and a certainty that you'll lose a lot of troops, equipment, etc. during the process, the less likely that you actually start a war.
Yes, the same is true when you're chance is 10/90 against you, but there is no global 10/90 stable situation because it would always leave at least one party who doesn't have a superior partner and would thus be free to start any war it likes. A 50/50 situation can be globally stable, probably not among all partners but with various 50/50 "levels".
Heck, I can even hack the document [ala unzip and sed] if I want to do something not natively supported by OO directly [e.g. substituting all fonts in the document instantly].
#1 reason for OpenOffice for me ever since that day I converted the magicpress slides of some of the speakers to (ironically) powerpoint via OpenOffice using a couple shellscripts.
If the formats are non-binary, you can convert anything into anything using scripts. In the windos world, there is shareware converting software. Some of these days I feel sorry for the people who have to fork out $30 or so for something I can do on a single commandline.
You miss the point, because the useful life-time of highways is 50, 100 years while that of an operating system is 5, maybe 10.
The more delays there are, the more people will discover OS X in the meantime. Linux will improve. People will realize there really isn't anything in Vista they need that XP doesn't offer. Who knows, there might even be an entirely new competitor in 2007. More importantly, if the delay isn't caused by new research and more state-of-the-art features that need including, then it means that the OS released in 2007 will be on the 2005 technology level, cutting its useful life-time by 1-2 years, i.e. 20%.
Goes to show that spammers are not what they claim to be - harmless mass-mailing advertisers. Maybe they were 10 years ago. Today's spammers are serious criminals, often with links to organized crime.
Good thing the FBI et al finally take them seriously. Let's hope it's not too late. We wouldn't want them to combine their two "talents" and mass-mail death threats...
Yes, but not as much as most guys here think or the "get laid" jokes would've vanished during the dot-com times.
Call me a romantic, but if your dates sound that much like a job interview, I'd have to say you're doing something wrong.
I didn't want to move away from the topic into the really difficult terrain of talking about things that really have nothing to do with computers. I'd probably have been modded -5 incomprehensible.
In the labor market, a shortage of labor is a power force that boosts wages and improves working conditions.
While I agree with many of these points, you are overlooking one major factor: Time.
The government does have a job interfering and "correcting" the shortage, because new IT professionals don't grow on trees. Yes, the market will fix itself. But it might take a decade or two, and a lot of companies might go belly up in that time, dumping a lot of people unto the market, and on wellfare. And that's paid by the government, so the.gov has an interest in avoiding that scenario. And yes, the IT workers in the bancrupt company will find a new job quickly if it was a shortage in their career path that caused the whole thing to go down. But for every IT worker thus "freed" for the market, there'll be 100 non-IT workers. They're the problem.
the job you're doing/going to do - does it require your actual physical presence? If not, then it can be offshored.
Dead wrong. It's not whether or not the job requires your physical presence - it's whether the business and team organisation does.
Offshore, outsource and other buzzwords of "cost cutting" ignore (in bad companies) or consider (in good ones) that teams need to meet to discuss details, and not only within themselves, but also with marketing, customer support, upper management any anyone else in the food chain.
The proper question would be: Can your job be done in a small square room with minimal outside contact?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure they squander all the money on booze and hookers.
Booze I can confirm, but Theo's girl would object to hookers.
You must be from the US if the first thing that comes to your mind is legal liabilities.
This is what M$ has been moving towards for many years - subscription services. They've voiced their "concern" that people don't pay continuously several times. They've tried projects with M$ Office of that kind. Now they found their prey: Gamers.
Expect more of the same. Billy and Balmer have been having wet dreams about this for at least 10 years - pay for everything. I wouldn't be surprised if you'd have to pay for your save-game slots in a year or two.
Email should be left to its "mail" - dont start adding layers to something that was never meant to be.
:)
Too late, buddy.
No one is ever going to win.
You assume "they" are interested in winning.
I propose that they aren't. Many more involved parties profit more from the ongoing conflict than from its resolution. That includes especially the lawyers, but also law enforcement, a large number of institutes, think-tanks, industry associations, etc. and of course the media which gets a fairly reliable source of news every now and then.
That's true for both, the war on drugs and the copyright war.
I'll never understand the "I steal so I can play without the disk!" mentality that some people have. It's not like it's that hard to change disks.
Right, and that's not what it's about. Read on...
When games first started coming out on CD, they all required you to have the game disk in the drive.
Correct, but something important has changed since then. Read on...
"See, judge, I wanna make my life slightly more convienent, at the cost of Ubisoft's business."
Convenient, yes. At the cost of someone else? No. This is about the following scenario:
Many, many people's main machine is a notebook these days (that's what's changed, point 2). It's not about switching the CD, it's about whether or not you have to lug around a box of CDs in addition to the notebook, power plug and assorted other hardware you have. It reduces the value of having a portable system at all (that's why we prefer not having to use the CDs, point 1).
And many of these complaints are from people who actually bought the games, so Ubisoft (or whoever else) already got their business.
Yes, he's giving away lot.
However, study some business economics and have your ears wide open when the topic is "monopoly profits". The thing about them is that the profit of the monopoly is much, much lower than the damage it causes to the general public. For every $ that Bill has made, he's done 2, 3, maybe 5 $ worth of damage to the public.
In other words: Yes, he gives a billion or two away. That is a) our money and b) we'd have several times that if it weren't for him. Which leads to c) in a fair market, without a monopoly, the total sum profit of all participants would be much higher, and if even half of them would give as much of their share as Bill does, then the total given would be more.
He's still a robber baron. And his donations are probably just a way to a) wash his image clean and b) get tax breaks.
But to believe that one lawyer in Iowa is going to bring them down, when the full weight of the U.S. Department of Justice couldn't do it,
Never forget that they nailed Al Capone on tax evasion.
Sometimes, what should've worked doesn't, and the crazy thing does.
I agree. I have a very deep-seated dislike for M$, but for a number of reasons they definitely should be treated fairly - if only to lower the chances for a successful appeal.
However, I also believe they should be treated fair, but harsh. They have done an enornemous(sp?) amount of damage to others, and if they are convicted, it is time that they pay society back what they've taken.
Their hearing should be fair...
Yes, but...
That being said, until I get something other then vague generalities about "documents", it's going to be impossible to convince me that anything unfair is actually occurring.
Exactly. They are being treated fairly. They just claim that they aren't. Just their latest attempt at making the EU fall over like the US did. They hope that somewhere, someone will whisper in the right ears that after those accusations, the punishment should not be too stiff, because it would confirm the (baseless) accusations.
Diplomatic games, that's all.
Come on, people. Stop wondering, it's obvious why M$ is doing this. It's the same old game again. They already ship IE with the OS, but that's just not enough to beat gmail. So they need to find a way to ship hotmail with the OS. Obviously, a dedicated, pre-installed client, sold as the latest and greatest (that's why they don't just use Outlook) and set up as the default e-mail handler, is the answer.
Patterns. M$ doesn't innovate, not even business strategies. This is just the same old game once more.
The funny thing is that the studios would almost certainly see a lot less actual piracy if they would stop having their DVD presses run cheaply in China and other places where it's sometimes difficult to find a legit DVD.
I guess they added up the figures and came to the conclusion it's still cheaper doing it that way. They only fake the losses when they need to force through some new law.
Not all cultures are morally equivalent.
Not all cultures have the same moral to be equivalent to...
the people that are making the major software decisions are at best technically inept, and at worst blissfully clueless.
You got your problem right there. Why are these people allowed to make these choices? That is the real question, not "how do we fool them? Oh wait, by dressing just like them". That's business, not problem-solving.
Shower. Shave. Buy some button up shirts and a pair of slacks. From my experience, this makes all the difference in the world. Like it or not - it's the way the game is played.
But it's a multiplayer game where the rules can be modded. We're modding the rules. During the dot-com era, we were quite successful at doing so. Right now, we got gibbed and are still busy gathering the powerups after the respawn, but sooner or later we'll be back.
He is talking about peoples' perceptions, and the need to be politically savvy when selling OSS to those same people.
But he's also assuming that they have more to offer us then we have to offer them.
And that ain't true. They might offer us a business deal worth thousands of dollars, but we offer them software worth several millions.
It's only because we give it away anyway that they even stand a chance with their "adopt to me, why should I adopt to you?" attitude.
Given that it's the corporations who'd profit quite considerably from adopting Free Software more, and no so much the other way around, I'd say he has it backwards:
It's the outdated and irrational reliance on basing technical judgement calls on clothes instead of technology that is holding the business world back in their adoption of Free Software.
I suspect all these countries that go after MS still have MASSIVE installed bases of MS software. Are all these fines just a round about way of getting lower license costs?
Only in the same way that going after drug dealers is a way to get cheaper sports cars onto the market. In other words: Yes, if you insist on some really convoluted thinking, you can construct that being the case. For everyone who likes Ockham's Razor better, the case is simple close-and-shut: Criminal company breaks law and gets sued.
Excellent point, parent.
However, grandparent's argument was another one: The more "fair" a war is, i.e. the closer you are to having just a 50/50 chance of winning and a certainty that you'll lose a lot of troops, equipment, etc. during the process, the less likely that you actually start a war.
Yes, the same is true when you're chance is 10/90 against you, but there is no global 10/90 stable situation because it would always leave at least one party who doesn't have a superior partner and would thus be free to start any war it likes. A 50/50 situation can be globally stable, probably not among all partners but with various 50/50 "levels".
At what point does war become a targeted genocide?
Since about 1964.
Heck, I can even hack the document [ala unzip and sed] if I want to do something not natively supported by OO directly [e.g. substituting all fonts in the document instantly].
#1 reason for OpenOffice for me ever since that day I converted the magicpress slides of some of the speakers to (ironically) powerpoint via OpenOffice using a couple shellscripts.
If the formats are non-binary, you can convert anything into anything using scripts. In the windos world, there is shareware converting software. Some of these days I feel sorry for the people who have to fork out $30 or so for something I can do on a single commandline.
You miss the point, because the useful life-time of highways is 50, 100 years while that of an operating system is 5, maybe 10.
The more delays there are, the more people will discover OS X in the meantime. Linux will improve. People will realize there really isn't anything in Vista they need that XP doesn't offer. Who knows, there might even be an entirely new competitor in 2007.
More importantly, if the delay isn't caused by new research and more state-of-the-art features that need including, then it means that the OS released in 2007 will be on the 2005 technology level, cutting its useful life-time by 1-2 years, i.e. 20%.
Goes to show that spammers are not what they claim to be - harmless mass-mailing advertisers. Maybe they were 10 years ago. Today's spammers are serious criminals, often with links to organized crime.
Good thing the FBI et al finally take them seriously. Let's hope it's not too late. We wouldn't want them to combine their two "talents" and mass-mail death threats...
They just care about your bank account balance!
Yes, but not as much as most guys here think or the "get laid" jokes would've vanished during the dot-com times.
Call me a romantic, but if your dates sound that much like a job interview, I'd have to say you're doing something wrong.
I didn't want to move away from the topic into the really difficult terrain of talking about things that really have nothing to do with computers. I'd probably have been modded -5 incomprehensible.
In the labor market, a shortage of labor is a power force that boosts wages and improves working conditions.
.gov has an interest in avoiding that scenario.
While I agree with many of these points, you are overlooking one major factor: Time.
The government does have a job interfering and "correcting" the shortage, because new IT professionals don't grow on trees. Yes, the market will fix itself. But it might take a decade or two, and a lot of companies might go belly up in that time, dumping a lot of people unto the market, and on wellfare. And that's paid by the government, so the
And yes, the IT workers in the bancrupt company will find a new job quickly if it was a shortage in their career path that caused the whole thing to go down. But for every IT worker thus "freed" for the market, there'll be 100 non-IT workers. They're the problem.
the job you're doing/going to do - does it require your actual physical presence? If not, then it can be offshored.
Dead wrong. It's not whether or not the job requires your physical presence - it's whether the business and team organisation does.
Offshore, outsource and other buzzwords of "cost cutting" ignore (in bad companies) or consider (in good ones) that teams need to meet to discuss details, and not only within themselves, but also with marketing, customer support, upper management any anyone else in the food chain.
The proper question would be: Can your job be done in a small square room with minimal outside contact?