You can't displace another product by being "good enough", because there is no incentive to change. You need to be better - *much* better.
This isn't necessarily so. More often than not so called 'disruptive technologies' are not higher quality at all. Their real benefits are cost and production efficiency, not higher quality. The most famous example of this would have to be the Luddite movement. English artisans may have made fine quality textiles but the industrial era heralded higher production levels and lower quality products, which most importantly were cheaper and easier to produce. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite.
On of the problems the US government have with Venezuela is that they want to diversify their oil output, aka. shuip a bunch of it to China. The other is that the Venezualans would like to denominate their oil-supply in currencies other than the $. Crazy wahhabis will still be funded in dollars, but the Bolivarian revolution will be funded by a basket of currencies, as will Iran's nuclear energy project. The more oil is sold in vs $, the less demand there is for US Treasury Bills and by extension the $, queue drop in value vs. other main currencies.
If I'm not mistaken it is impossible to block the MS site through tweaking the hosts file. This is to ensure "misconfigurations do not prevent customers from visiting the MS update site" or so I believe the spin went. A non MS firewall could block it probably, but you would be best off blocking it at your router rather than trusting the configuration on a windows machine.
Re:Piracy is marker of immature market
on
Piracy Economics
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· Score: 0
The key, really, is that if the market naturally tends towards monopoly, then a producer with a higher market share can produce more efficiently than producers with lower market shares.
This can't be, at least not (necessarily) in the case of software. A large scale producer may enjoy certain economies of scale and their marketing will be more pervasive. However, producing and distributing free software is more efficient than the proprietary way. This is most evident from the consumers' point of view. On the development side, the ability of users to contribute more in the process can have a big impact on testing and developing software. All this, even though it has a lower market share.
The market does tend to monolopy though. What I've been nitpicking you on is that in my view, if MS had 70% rather than 95% the market would demand interoperability, the current state of affairs wouldn't fly. Furthermore, device manufacturers will be more willing to provide some support for Linux using customers, and perhaps add a "Runs on Linux For Sure" logo on it. In other words, Microsoft would be in a completely different situation as they are now, namely competing on a price/quality basis with Mac and Linux. In my view, once Linux hits that scale it will be the last hurrah for Microsoft as the monopolist in the OS market. The OS as a product will truly have hit commodity status.
Your calculations are correct for a producer in a one shot game, one who wasn't concerned about the impact of pricing in this round has on the next one. We know the way MS behave, so we know that they very much care about losing their monopoly status, increased revenue be damned. Remember, no investor will look kindly on Microsoft handing over 25% of the global installed base to Linux, or even pirated OS X installs. The impact such an even would haev on their shareprice should make that clear. The real monopoly is in the windows installed base, once that starts dropping the monopolists' game is up. They can still lock people in, but the tide will start to move against them (more than it currently is).
You seem to have confused 'tariff' with 'embargo'. What the parent means is the subsidy for making sugar, in this case from corn. Domestic sugar producers cannot compete with foreign companies who produce it from sugarcane, it's a much cheaper source of it. The subsidies for corn, there so it can be used to make corn syrop and ethanol. This serves to decrease demand for foreign sugar and results in a hole bunch of very poor central/south american countries. It would be better for both US consumers and the sugarcane growers if the subsidies were dropped, but it may impact the amount of 'pork' senators get. The British do the same with sugarbeet. Of their Common Agricultural Policy subsidies the vast majority of it goes to beetroot farmers, so they can produce sugar which is much cheaper to buy on the international market. But boy look at those Dominicans, aren't they poor!
Early adopters are the ones voting with their money for the format they prefer. Do you really want dumb republicans making technological decisions for you?
An interesting experiment would be to see which format currently has more 'Moses went to the mound' type films amongst the available collection. Well, ok ok, on which format are 300 and the passion? Given your theory, this would clearly demonstrate which will be the dominant platform of the future.
My guess is that no matter what happens between bluray and hddvd, the chinese format will win.
Re:Piracy is marker of immature market
on
Piracy Economics
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· Score: 0
If/When Microsofts' market share drops to a point where they cannot be considered a monopolist, they will also unable to earn monopoly rents. Furthermore, for it to get that far, the switching costs would have fallen significantly in the eyes of the consumer (or consumers value linux more). The total value of Microsofts' market is about equal to the sum of the switching costs of their consumers (Varian - Info Rules, if I recall), which would imply their revenues are going to go down the drain.
Non-monopoly status in the market for Microsoft would imply that they may be able to bundle all they want, but I don't see this is a huge problem. One group that was never discussed in the media player bundling debacle were users themselves, and they had already spoken by then. The two formats most widely seen on the peer-to-peer networks were.avi and.mpg,.rm/.wmv were considered bad proprietary crap. As far as the other activities MS would be allowed to do, as far as I know they're doing all of those already, it's what they mean with the term 'interoperability' - interoperable with other MS software.
As the market becomes more diversified and more aware of the cost of technological lock-in, any increase in lock-in can act to reduce the effective switching costs. More bundling and non-functional crud ware can't be seen as a successful strategy for a non-monopolist producing in such a marketplace, you'll have to compete on price and innovation to set yourself apart.
Re:Piracy is marker of immature market
on
Piracy Economics
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· Score: 0
Interesting post. Having read the mises article I (as usual with them) felt that a few key points were glossed over. Specifically, network effects. I had in mind to make a similar post to yours, but as it's been written and commenting is 'cheap' heres my addendum:
4. (Near) monopoly, with regulation: if regulatory restrictions are imposed on a firm with a near monopoly, that means the gains of network effects and the prevention of new entrants are offset by both the lost revenue and the costs of the restrictions (e.g. no bundling, limitations on pricing strategies, etc.). I this case, the more onerous the restrictions, the less value there is from piracy. It may be worthwhile to give up unpaid market share, in exchange for higher revenue, especially if this leads to a reduction in regulation. Of the four posts, I agree with the first 3. Maybe they can be elaborated on, but you've got to the root of the issue. On this fourth point, however, I found myself raising my eyebrow. What you say about the gains of the network effects being offset by the lost revenue of the restrictions is fine, but this doesn't explain properly the lost value of piracy. Sure, they may not be able to price as aggressively, but forcing MS to make windows more affordable means there is less incentive for pirating their crud in the first place.
However, for those that are priced out of the market it is categorically not in their interest to see even a small proportion of those switch to an alternative, unless the alternative is completely inoperable with the software used by the great majority. The relative proportion of piracies' benefit to the network effect and thus it's impact may be reduced, but a benefit is still always a benefit.
As for people who will always pirate switching to linux not being a big loss to MS I disagree. I think they are, or at least can be. You have to consider the demographics of these people. Some may inadvertently have an unlicensed version, but amongst them are the typical male teen/twenties customer who pirates it because paying full price for windows when you're building a pc stinks, and well you....you can. This is of course on of the breeding grounds for the techies of tomorrow. The plan for MS is to ensure that once these kids go to college and later get a job they follow the MS path, not the FLOSS crowd. It's all about maintaining their position, and keeping the Linux network effect down at the same time.
It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that this invention will be of inestimable use to chief executive officers wishing to lay claim to exclusive access of their products to various markets.
Couldn't that just as well be:
A tubular structure made of a suitable material.
Between one and infinity legs to provide balance.
A flat or ergonomically shaped horizontal surface to suit the human posterior
Optionally a back rest, see patent claim 493034864.
Of a weight suitable to launching said device ("chair", patent pending) across a meeting room
Multiple reasons.
First off, Etch doesn't aim to put the very latest software onto your pc as soon as possible. Now that it's hit stable it'll be just that. It ships with gnome 2.14, which has been out for over a year, meaning there are few bugs remaining. Also, there will be no upgrades for the sake of upgrades, from now on you'll mostly get security updates when necessary. Debian has a slower release cycle, so you won't have to run the gauntlet with a 6-monthly dist-upgrade. (you can stay on 6.10, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if ubuntu developers focus mainly on the latest and LTS versions).
In reply to the parent, I agree, it's a very positive review. My only gripe is that she didn't recommend people to forget about 64bit until the proprietary slowpokes pull up their socks. Having struggled with 64bit distros over the years has taught me that 64bit definitely isn't noob ready. I fear for all the enthusiasts who opt to install that over 32bit and are left with a bad impression of linux in general, not realizing that their problems aren't linux problems at all.
1. Buy AIDS penny stock 2. Convince Africa to invest in the pharma market so someone will be more likely to invent an Aids cure 3. Sell all AIDS once youve got a big margin and watch the stock tumble 4. Retire
Another victory for Capitalism! What have you lot got against profit?
Distrowatch does this... shows the popularity of different distros. It sometimes influences me to try knew distros that manage to make it to the top of the list even if I have never heard of them.
We could add the different unices to the list and have a *NIX-change, then we could all short SCO....Oh wait, thats possible already!
Speaking of zealots, wasn't Jonathan Schwartz ranting about how the GPL sucked at some keynote address last year? Oh wait! He did! He even wrote about on its weblog:
Linus already said that Linux is not now, and will not in the near future, be released under GPLv3. And since GPLv3 is not reverse compatible with GPLv2 (it has more restrictions), this won't happen.
Everyone on Slashdot should know that experimental features go into the -mm sources first, so that's how GPL3 will makes its way in. Lets just hope the bugs aren't too bad.
well, publicity means reaching the general public imho. i was thinking of something along the lines of open-sores/gpl=filthy red commies licence/windows>linux stories you see on pcworld.
If you had run around the room holding your wifi access point you might've even had an invention you could've patented (think of the $$ you could be spending on twinkies!)
Virii and cracks are often released as GPLed code, so anything that includes a neutered version of those would be a GPL violation. Sounds a bit like a publicity disaster waiting to happen, and it's proof that the GPL is a viral license:P
We have this in holland too. Bus, train, tram etc. with added info for some taxi services. This is by no means innovative. However, it must be said that it'll be more honest about travel times:
1. I would like to take a bus from A to B, then train to C
I don't know much about scrum, but I'm not surprised to hear that it's easier to implement in a small team rather than a big org. As for Extreme Programming, if it's anything like Extreme Ironing then it's doomed to fail, although possibly a good definition of 'Waterfall Methodologies'!!
If I find one of these in the shops, there will be filth all over the keyboard. And, once I've overcome the Michael Jackson like fear of attemting to touch it, I'll find that the controls are unplugged. Hooray!
Maybe game companies should consider offering downloadable demos....oh wait, nm
I don't believe that google are going after a post-OS metaphor, that simply requires far too much investment on the customer's part. Most of their non-search technology would be very useful in a wi-fi world. GMaps, GMail, Froogle, Picasa. Basically, their bet is on the improvement of cell phones to the point where they're a) ubiquitous (actually, that's a reality already) and b) able to serve/display content to compete with PDAs. Given that most of their apps are web-based, theres not much need for the cell phone in terms of cpu power. And if their GBase proves not to be vapourware, the pieces fall into place for google to take over the/home and \MyWindows folders (or whatever M$ call it). Granted, M$ wont sacrifice that area so easily, but a GTalk app could take care of that, especially if it allowed you to chat without overriding the settings of the PC you happen to be sitting at. In other words, you can chat on GTalk whilst at work using your settings from your home PC, then use your phone to take pictures of girls on the underground and they'll be listed in your GDesktopSearch even before you get home. I don't see how Google are going to sell roaming profiles to the masses without such a strategy.
Does anybody else think that all the hype about the new controller is reminiscent of y2k vapourware? 2-Handed D-Pads are a tried and proven concept, whereas pointing an IR light at a TV screen seems to be a very difficult method of controlling anything other than an options screen. Nintendo's optical Duck Hunt gun looks far more accurate than the Revolution controller. Judging by the way most people rest the TV remote on their beergut, I don't see this vapourware as something that's going to bridge the gap between console salesmen and the non-gaming public. In fact, the Revolution controller looks like something that's going to be damned uncomfortable to hold in ones' hands for games that rely on the normal D-Pad configuration, vastly increasing the incendence of 'Nintendo Thumb' syndrome (a.k.a. carpal tunnel)... your thoughts?
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't necessarily so. More often than not so called 'disruptive technologies' are not higher quality at all. Their real benefits are cost and production efficiency, not higher quality. The most famous example of this would have to be the Luddite movement. English artisans may have made fine quality textiles but the industrial era heralded higher production levels and lower quality products, which most importantly were cheaper and easier to produce. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite.
I reflexively assume that such titles are Orwellian in nature. Thus, I read it as Director of Linux INoperability.
On of the problems the US government have with Venezuela is that they want to diversify their oil output, aka. shuip a bunch of it to China. The other is that the Venezualans would like to denominate their oil-supply in currencies other than the $. Crazy wahhabis will still be funded in dollars, but the Bolivarian revolution will be funded by a basket of currencies, as will Iran's nuclear energy project. The more oil is sold in vs $, the less demand there is for US Treasury Bills and by extension the $, queue drop in value vs. other main currencies.
If I'm not mistaken it is impossible to block the MS site through tweaking the hosts file. This is to ensure "misconfigurations do not prevent customers from visiting the MS update site" or so I believe the spin went. A non MS firewall could block it probably, but you would be best off blocking it at your router rather than trusting the configuration on a windows machine.
This can't be, at least not (necessarily) in the case of software. A large scale producer may enjoy certain economies of scale and their marketing will be more pervasive. However, producing and distributing free software is more efficient than the proprietary way. This is most evident from the consumers' point of view. On the development side, the ability of users to contribute more in the process can have a big impact on testing and developing software. All this, even though it has a lower market share.
The market does tend to monolopy though. What I've been nitpicking you on is that in my view, if MS had 70% rather than 95% the market would demand interoperability, the current state of affairs wouldn't fly. Furthermore, device manufacturers will be more willing to provide some support for Linux using customers, and perhaps add a "Runs on Linux For Sure" logo on it. In other words, Microsoft would be in a completely different situation as they are now, namely competing on a price/quality basis with Mac and Linux. In my view, once Linux hits that scale it will be the last hurrah for Microsoft as the monopolist in the OS market. The OS as a product will truly have hit commodity status.
Your calculations are correct for a producer in a one shot game, one who wasn't concerned about the impact of pricing in this round has on the next one. We know the way MS behave, so we know that they very much care about losing their monopoly status, increased revenue be damned. Remember, no investor will look kindly on Microsoft handing over 25% of the global installed base to Linux, or even pirated OS X installs. The impact such an even would haev on their shareprice should make that clear. The real monopoly is in the windows installed base, once that starts dropping the monopolists' game is up. They can still lock people in, but the tide will start to move against them (more than it currently is).
Aargh, for beetroot read rhubarb!
You seem to have confused 'tariff' with 'embargo'. What the parent means is the subsidy for making sugar, in this case from corn. Domestic sugar producers cannot compete with foreign companies who produce it from sugarcane, it's a much cheaper source of it. The subsidies for corn, there so it can be used to make corn syrop and ethanol. This serves to decrease demand for foreign sugar and results in a hole bunch of very poor central/south american countries. It would be better for both US consumers and the sugarcane growers if the subsidies were dropped, but it may impact the amount of 'pork' senators get. The British do the same with sugarbeet. Of their Common Agricultural Policy subsidies the vast majority of it goes to beetroot farmers, so they can produce sugar which is much cheaper to buy on the international market. But boy look at those Dominicans, aren't they poor!
Early adopters are the ones voting with their money for the format they prefer. Do you really want dumb republicans making technological decisions for you?
An interesting experiment would be to see which format currently has more 'Moses went to the mound' type films amongst the available collection. Well, ok ok, on which format are 300 and the passion? Given your theory, this would clearly demonstrate which will be the dominant platform of the future.
My guess is that no matter what happens between bluray and hddvd, the chinese format will win.If/When Microsofts' market share drops to a point where they cannot be considered a monopolist, they will also unable to earn monopoly rents. Furthermore, for it to get that far, the switching costs would have fallen significantly in the eyes of the consumer (or consumers value linux more). The total value of Microsofts' market is about equal to the sum of the switching costs of their consumers (Varian - Info Rules, if I recall), which would imply their revenues are going to go down the drain.
Non-monopoly status in the market for Microsoft would imply that they may be able to bundle all they want, but I don't see this is a huge problem. One group that was never discussed in the media player bundling debacle were users themselves, and they had already spoken by then. The two formats most widely seen on the peer-to-peer networks were .avi and .mpg, .rm/.wmv were considered bad proprietary crap. As far as the other activities MS would be allowed to do, as far as I know they're doing all of those already, it's what they mean with the term 'interoperability' - interoperable with other MS software.
As the market becomes more diversified and more aware of the cost of technological lock-in, any increase in lock-in can act to reduce the effective switching costs. More bundling and non-functional crud ware can't be seen as a successful strategy for a non-monopolist producing in such a marketplace, you'll have to compete on price and innovation to set yourself apart.
Multiple reasons. First off, Etch doesn't aim to put the very latest software onto your pc as soon as possible. Now that it's hit stable it'll be just that. It ships with gnome 2.14, which has been out for over a year, meaning there are few bugs remaining. Also, there will be no upgrades for the sake of upgrades, from now on you'll mostly get security updates when necessary. Debian has a slower release cycle, so you won't have to run the gauntlet with a 6-monthly dist-upgrade. (you can stay on 6.10, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if ubuntu developers focus mainly on the latest and LTS versions). In reply to the parent, I agree, it's a very positive review. My only gripe is that she didn't recommend people to forget about 64bit until the proprietary slowpokes pull up their socks. Having struggled with 64bit distros over the years has taught me that 64bit definitely isn't noob ready. I fear for all the enthusiasts who opt to install that over 32bit and are left with a bad impression of linux in general, not realizing that their problems aren't linux problems at all.
1. Buy AIDS penny stock
2. Convince Africa to invest in the pharma market so someone will be more likely to invent an Aids cure
3. Sell all AIDS once youve got a big margin and watch the stock tumble
4. Retire
Another victory for Capitalism! What have you lot got against profit?
We could add the different unices to the list and have a *NIX-change, then we could all short SCO....Oh wait, thats possible already!
/me off to call broker
Speaking of zealots, wasn't Jonathan Schwartz ranting about how the GPL sucked at some keynote address last year? Oh wait! He did! He even wrote about on its weblog:
well, publicity means reaching the general public imho. i was thinking of something along the lines of open-sores/gpl=filthy red commies licence/windows>linux stories you see on pcworld.
If you had run around the room holding your wifi access point you might've even had an invention you could've patented (think of the $$ you could be spending on twinkies!)
Virii and cracks are often released as GPLed code, so anything that includes a neutered version of those would be a GPL violation. Sounds a bit like a publicity disaster waiting to happen, and it's proof that the GPL is a viral license :P
We have this in holland too. Bus, train, tram etc. with added info for some taxi services. This is by no means innovative. However, it must be said that it'll be more honest about travel times:
1. I would like to take a bus from A to B, then train to C
2. Leave at 08:00 AM or arrive before 09:00 AM
3. You must be feeling Lucky!
I don't know much about scrum, but I'm not surprised to hear that it's easier to implement in a small team rather than a big org. As for Extreme Programming, if it's anything like Extreme Ironing then it's doomed to fail, although possibly a good definition of 'Waterfall Methodologies'!!
If I find one of these in the shops, there will be filth all over the keyboard. And, once I've overcome the Michael Jackson like fear of attemting to touch it, I'll find that the controls are unplugged. Hooray!
Maybe game companies should consider offering downloadable demos....oh wait, nm
Unfortunately swearing at XP doesn't work, you motherfucker!
I don't believe that google are going after a post-OS metaphor, that simply requires far too much investment on the customer's part. Most of their non-search technology would be very useful in a wi-fi world. GMaps, GMail, Froogle, Picasa. Basically, their bet is on the improvement of cell phones to the point where they're a) ubiquitous (actually, that's a reality already) and b) able to serve/display content to compete with PDAs. Given that most of their apps are web-based, theres not much need for the cell phone in terms of cpu power. And if their GBase proves not to be vapourware, the pieces fall into place for google to take over the /home and \MyWindows folders (or whatever M$ call it). Granted, M$ wont sacrifice that area so easily, but a GTalk app could take care of that, especially if it allowed you to chat without overriding the settings of the PC you happen to be sitting at. In other words, you can chat on GTalk whilst at work using your settings from your home PC, then use your phone to take pictures of girls on the underground and they'll be listed in your GDesktopSearch even before you get home. I don't see how Google are going to sell roaming profiles to the masses without such a strategy.
Does anybody else think that all the hype about the new controller is reminiscent of y2k vapourware? 2-Handed D-Pads are a tried and proven concept, whereas pointing an IR light at a TV screen seems to be a very difficult method of controlling anything other than an options screen. Nintendo's optical Duck Hunt gun looks far more accurate than the Revolution controller. Judging by the way most people rest the TV remote on their beergut, I don't see this vapourware as something that's going to bridge the gap between console salesmen and the non-gaming public. In fact, the Revolution controller looks like something that's going to be damned uncomfortable to hold in ones' hands for games that rely on the normal D-Pad configuration, vastly increasing the incendence of 'Nintendo Thumb' syndrome (a.k.a. carpal tunnel)... your thoughts?