Other times the companies involved just rig the market.
If the market is being rigged, a true competitive state does not exist, and the government has to step in (e.g. with anti-trust laws) and restore competition. Competition is nearly always good for the consumer. However, the free market does not always encourage competition.
The thing is that all of the above processes require root access. If you're going with a 3rd party hosting service, that's something you won't have. This is what the grandparent poster was talking about. The reason that MySQL is so popular is that ISPs include it, and that those who need a database on their website are therefore "locked into" MySQL.
The only problem with that reasoning is that, while you may gain a fair amount of data from a non-scientific poll, the data will be worthless, as there will be no guarantee that the data reflects what is actually happening in the real world.
As an example, if you sample those whose net worth is $1,000,000 or higher about poverty, will you gain any useful data about poverty in the USA? Just as a poverty survey must include both the well-off and the poor, a survey about wasting time ought to include those working and those slacking off. Of course, since this is a web-based survey, those who respond to it are likely to be slacking off anyway, there is a selection bias in the data that calls into doubt any conclusions derived from it.
As I see it, the Netburst architecture of the Intel P4s was to provide more performance on things like video editing, and multimedia, at the cost of power efficiency and performance on non-video applications. However, I think Intel overestimated the demand for high-performance video/multimedia editing machines, which explains its current backtracking to the Dothan core.
And I can imagine that if there is no way to get the stuff 'for free' from the internet, more people would choose the slightly more expensive legal version over the discount knockoff.
I don't think so. If that really occurred, we wouldn't be seeing people in Taiwanese and Malaysian markets selling DVDs and the latest versions of Windows software for $1 - $5. The people buying the software and media know that its been cracked and pirated, and therefore may not work properly (in addition to supporting crime), but the temptation of having a product at 90% discount is too strong.
Your local ISP may have been happy to hire you, but good luck getting in the door at any major corporation without any pieces of paper to get you past the HR department. Also, good luck getting work on new technology, when you don't have any degrees/certifications, and all your experience is in the old technology. You'd better be hoping that your ISP won't go out of business or get bought out, because its increasingly difficult to get or hold a job without documentation of skills through degrees or certifications, and the difficulty seems to increase exponentially with the size of the organization.
I don't think that anything should be protected forever. Originally trademarks and copyrights were created to protect works from piracy for the life of the owner. Now, since the majority of creative works are created by corporations (which are immortal in the current legal scheme), copyrights and trademarks have been twisted into providing everlasting protection, thus hindering future works.
In that case, you'd have something like the "clean-room" reverse engineering method used to duplicate the IBM BIOS for the PC clone market (i.e. the person testing bnetd tells the developer what the game expects but none of the internal details). While this is feasible for simple software, to try it for something as complex as BattleNet would be daunting. Also, you'd need extremely clear documentation of all messages passed, and all written code to be sure that no patents or copyrights were violated. Even if you did all of the above, you'd still be sunk if there was some kind of submarine patent that Blizzard had put out covering the general concept of hosting an online game.
They guy's working in a data center with its own dedicated generators and OC3 (or OC4) connections. Judging from the fact that he is moving 55 gal. drums for the generators, it seems like they have enough power for the computers, and he's mentioned something about aux. power for an elevator.
Its pretty hard to write an online game server without having a copy of the game in order to make sure that there's proper communication between the game and the server. In other words, you can code up all the independent servers you want, but the moment you get a Blizzard product to test your server, Blizzard can sue, either for copyright infringement (if your test copy is pirated), or under the posted ruling.
There are and always have been smaller original movies, it's just a matter of knowing where to see them.
Indeed. And now, with the advent of DVDs and high-performance home-theater systems, it can be argued that it has never been easier to enjoy independent movies. For some independent movies, the theatrical release has become almost an afterthought, as they increasingly play to the DVD rental market.
I don't see the problem - the whole point of free software is to disagree with the decisions the leader makes, and then reconfigure to suit your particular tics and psychoses.
And thereby regress the development of the software right back into the almost-finished, beta quality state that you complain about. Its pretty hard to move forward (new versions with new features), when you're moving sideways (existing versions being reconfigured to suit personal idiosyncrasies).
Unilever is a giant umbrella corporation that's the parent company of brands covering everything from soap (Dove) to food (Hellmans mayonaise [sic], Bertolli pasta, and Lipton tea). A significant fraction of the brands in your local grocery chain are owned by Unilever.
Well format c: may only take about 10 secs to type in, but it takes considerably longer than 10 secs to run (unless your hard drive is ridiculously small).
The main thrust of my argument stands, however. There will always be a market for fast cars, regardless of the fuel efficiency problems or environmental harm caused by those cars.
Where would Apple be right now if it wasn't for Steve Jobs? Where would Microsoft be without Bill Gates? Exactly. What Linux needs is for one company and/or person to do the same thing. Otherwise, Linux will always be 2nd or 3rd to something else.
I migrated to Linux precisely because it was free from Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and anyone else's domination. The whole appeal of Linux is that you can have your OS your way, not how Bill Gates or Steve Jobs wants you to have it. Can Linux improve? Yes, of course it can. But I don't think such improvements should come at the cost of independence.
In addition to the above philosophical disagreement, I also think your idea has a practical flaw. Simply, it's impossible to please everyone. Therefore, even if Linux gained a champion on the order of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, someone with marketing and business sense in addition to coding skills, there would always be a minority disliking the decisions that this leader makes. Given Linux's open-source nature, there would be little disincentive for these disaffected minorities to fork their own distro's of Linux. With Linux already being as scattered as it is, I hardly think that this would be the answer. Combine this with the practical difficulty of getting all existing distros under a single banner (they can't even agree on a packaging system, much less an OS structure), and your vision, while being a nice thought experiment, becomes nearly impossible to implement in the real world.
Today's teens are starting to seriously think hybrids, electrics and hydrogen-powered cars are cool.
Somehow, I don't think anyone told the teenagers who are busy turning efficient Civics into inefficient turbo'd ricers with high volume exhaust systems.
Well, it is valid to keep the current test secret, but I do think that the testing organizations ought to release sample questions, so that test takers can assess their preparation before going in to take the exam. For example, the SAT releases the previous year's exams to the public. If these testing organizations did the same, many would consider it an acceptable balance between security and openness.
As you've so rightly pointed out, utility and innovation are two completely different things. Open Source, while posessing lots of utility, doesn't posess much innovation.
The problem, as GP has stated, lies with detection, rather than with countermeasures. Detecting artillery shells coming from miles away is different from detecting an RPG round fired from meters away. Even with fast computers you would be hard pressed to detect something as small as an RPG round, and calculate its trajectory before it hits you, especially considering the fact that the launchers are easily moved and hidden (i.e. no fixed launch locations to narrow down trajectory calculations). The fact that you're fighting in an urban combat zone only makes it worse, seeing as you're going to have to account for launch positions above you (buildings), as well as for launches from ground level.
True, but at my library all users use a guest account, and the it is routine for another user to sit down when one user gets up. If the second user goes to the same site as the previous user (a distinct possibility with popular sites like CNN), the second user may not be counted as a unique visitor, as his IP address would be the same, there wouldn't be a significant time difference, and the cookies would all be present from the previous session.
Also, what happens when multiple people go to a site from a location that has NAT? Do they all get counted as one person?
Slashdot Mirror
Other times the companies involved just rig the market.
If the market is being rigged, a true competitive state does not exist, and the government has to step in (e.g. with anti-trust laws) and restore competition. Competition is nearly always good for the consumer. However, the free market does not always encourage competition.
The thing is that all of the above processes require root access. If you're going with a 3rd party hosting service, that's something you won't have. This is what the grandparent poster was talking about. The reason that MySQL is so popular is that ISPs include it, and that those who need a database on their website are therefore "locked into" MySQL.
The only problem with that reasoning is that, while you may gain a fair amount of data from a non-scientific poll, the data will be worthless, as there will be no guarantee that the data reflects what is actually happening in the real world.
As an example, if you sample those whose net worth is $1,000,000 or higher about poverty, will you gain any useful data about poverty in the USA? Just as a poverty survey must include both the well-off and the poor, a survey about wasting time ought to include those working and those slacking off. Of course, since this is a web-based survey, those who respond to it are likely to be slacking off anyway, there is a selection bias in the data that calls into doubt any conclusions derived from it.
As I see it, the Netburst architecture of the Intel P4s was to provide more performance on things like video editing, and multimedia, at the cost of power efficiency and performance on non-video applications. However, I think Intel overestimated the demand for high-performance video/multimedia editing machines, which explains its current backtracking to the Dothan core.
I don't think so. If that really occurred, we wouldn't be seeing people in Taiwanese and Malaysian markets selling DVDs and the latest versions of Windows software for $1 - $5. The people buying the software and media know that its been cracked and pirated, and therefore may not work properly (in addition to supporting crime), but the temptation of having a product at 90% discount is too strong.
Or perhaps they should directly upgrade from Cat3 to Cat6...
Your local ISP may have been happy to hire you, but good luck getting in the door at any major corporation without any pieces of paper to get you past the HR department. Also, good luck getting work on new technology, when you don't have any degrees/certifications, and all your experience is in the old technology. You'd better be hoping that your ISP won't go out of business or get bought out, because its increasingly difficult to get or hold a job without documentation of skills through degrees or certifications, and the difficulty seems to increase exponentially with the size of the organization.
I don't think that anything should be protected forever. Originally trademarks and copyrights were created to protect works from piracy for the life of the owner. Now, since the majority of creative works are created by corporations (which are immortal in the current legal scheme), copyrights and trademarks have been twisted into providing everlasting protection, thus hindering future works.
In that case, you'd have something like the "clean-room" reverse engineering method used to duplicate the IBM BIOS for the PC clone market (i.e. the person testing bnetd tells the developer what the game expects but none of the internal details). While this is feasible for simple software, to try it for something as complex as BattleNet would be daunting. Also, you'd need extremely clear documentation of all messages passed, and all written code to be sure that no patents or copyrights were violated. Even if you did all of the above, you'd still be sunk if there was some kind of submarine patent that Blizzard had put out covering the general concept of hosting an online game.
They guy's working in a data center with its own dedicated generators and OC3 (or OC4) connections. Judging from the fact that he is moving 55 gal. drums for the generators, it seems like they have enough power for the computers, and he's mentioned something about aux. power for an elevator.
Its pretty hard to write an online game server without having a copy of the game in order to make sure that there's proper communication between the game and the server. In other words, you can code up all the independent servers you want, but the moment you get a Blizzard product to test your server, Blizzard can sue, either for copyright infringement (if your test copy is pirated), or under the posted ruling.
There are and always have been smaller original movies, it's just a matter of knowing where to see them.
Indeed. And now, with the advent of DVDs and high-performance home-theater systems, it can be argued that it has never been easier to enjoy independent movies. For some independent movies, the theatrical release has become almost an afterthought, as they increasingly play to the DVD rental market.
And thereby regress the development of the software right back into the almost-finished, beta quality state that you complain about. Its pretty hard to move forward (new versions with new features), when you're moving sideways (existing versions being reconfigured to suit personal idiosyncrasies).
Ah, I didn't see that, sorry.
Unilever is a giant umbrella corporation that's the parent company of brands covering everything from soap (Dove) to food (Hellmans mayonaise [sic], Bertolli pasta, and Lipton tea). A significant fraction of the brands in your local grocery chain are owned by Unilever.
Well format c: may only take about 10 secs to type in, but it takes considerably longer than 10 secs to run (unless your hard drive is ridiculously small).
Fair point.
The main thrust of my argument stands, however. There will always be a market for fast cars, regardless of the fuel efficiency problems or environmental harm caused by those cars.
I migrated to Linux precisely because it was free from Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and anyone else's domination. The whole appeal of Linux is that you can have your OS your way, not how Bill Gates or Steve Jobs wants you to have it. Can Linux improve? Yes, of course it can. But I don't think such improvements should come at the cost of independence.
In addition to the above philosophical disagreement, I also think your idea has a practical flaw. Simply, it's impossible to please everyone. Therefore, even if Linux gained a champion on the order of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, someone with marketing and business sense in addition to coding skills, there would always be a minority disliking the decisions that this leader makes. Given Linux's open-source nature, there would be little disincentive for these disaffected minorities to fork their own distro's of Linux. With Linux already being as scattered as it is, I hardly think that this would be the answer. Combine this with the practical difficulty of getting all existing distros under a single banner (they can't even agree on a packaging system, much less an OS structure), and your vision, while being a nice thought experiment, becomes nearly impossible to implement in the real world.
Somehow, I don't think anyone told the teenagers who are busy turning efficient Civics into inefficient turbo'd ricers with high volume exhaust systems.
Well, it is valid to keep the current test secret, but I do think that the testing organizations ought to release sample questions, so that test takers can assess their preparation before going in to take the exam. For example, the SAT releases the previous year's exams to the public. If these testing organizations did the same, many would consider it an acceptable balance between security and openness.
As you've so rightly pointed out, utility and innovation are two completely different things. Open Source, while posessing lots of utility, doesn't posess much innovation.
The problem, as GP has stated, lies with detection, rather than with countermeasures. Detecting artillery shells coming from miles away is different from detecting an RPG round fired from meters away. Even with fast computers you would be hard pressed to detect something as small as an RPG round, and calculate its trajectory before it hits you, especially considering the fact that the launchers are easily moved and hidden (i.e. no fixed launch locations to narrow down trajectory calculations). The fact that you're fighting in an urban combat zone only makes it worse, seeing as you're going to have to account for launch positions above you (buildings), as well as for launches from ground level.
I just added myself as quanticle. Feel free to add and instant message me.
True, but at my library all users use a guest account, and the it is routine for another user to sit down when one user gets up. If the second user goes to the same site as the previous user (a distinct possibility with popular sites like CNN), the second user may not be counted as a unique visitor, as his IP address would be the same, there wouldn't be a significant time difference, and the cookies would all be present from the previous session.
Also, what happens when multiple people go to a site from a location that has NAT? Do they all get counted as one person?
Well, the plane will be flying over the Pacific, so sonic booms aren't that big of a problem as you're flying over water.