The basic idea of a company is to maximize profits (incomes - costs). If you can raise prices without losing "too many" customers, you should do so - because it increases the profit of the company.
There is a limit though - when you start charging prices that are so high that you're losing a lot of your customers, the profit sinks (even though the profit per customer still rises (ideally), you get a lot less customers, and profits sink.)
You can make it more complicated (competitors influence each other, cost/quality-decisions, non-linear cost relationships, price sensitivity analysises, marketing mumbo-jumbo), but the basic principle still holds - the problem comes in attaining profit maximization.
Most people waste their early lives. Genius is genetic. Smart people were born that way. But most smart people now have to live in a society where schools teach sex education,...
And you consider that a bad thing? Doesn't that mean that they expect even nerds to get girlfriends today?:)
Yep. To me it usually suggests a driver that kills my soundcard, and a buggy Nvidia driver (somehow the only driver that works together with my TV card is a really old one. The +.01 version is fucked up, and the previous ones too...)
But you are cheating! If you give users write-permission in Program Files, and let them alter parts of registry they shouldn't touch, etc, you are basically using "user accounts" which are more or less as potent as an admin account!
Re:A disaster for Europeans!
on
Blank Keyboard
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· Score: 1
As a swedish student in Germany, I usually switch between PC-Swedish, Mac-Swedish, PC-German, PC-American. Argh! Actually I've considered a totally blank keyboard just because of that (it would be safe from my smaller sisters, too,though). Especially if you consider learning russian, greek, or perhaps arabic or something, it would payoff!
Which is exactly what they would like to do. Debit cards are quite usual in Europe, and it's not unusual with credit card fraud involves "fake billings" of some kind (ok, it's quite usual card copying etc is a part of the fraud, but not really a necessary one - internet card frauds are quite usual too, where sometimes you only need the card #).
The work-around for this problem is to never, ever, have more than ~$500 on the account tied to the card. Also, all risks of the debit cards are a problem of the bank (if handle the card with care), but it's still annoying having to deal with the problems.
1. I wasn't asked to naming an invention kept secret that ALSO made the inventor richer.
2. In 15th century Italy, having "loony blue-sky ideas" was a pretty good way to get foes in the church (da Vinci actually did and had to leave Italy for France). Staying friends with the church was a good way to be at least one head/life richer (compare: Galilei, Kopernikus, Luther, lots of "witches").
Your totally correct, you never get *perfect* results with any law you write. You have to be very pragmatic, and yes, you stiffle *some* innovation. But you also stiffle *some other* innovations by having the patents, because they also stop innovation in totally different areas. Problems like really "general" ideas for software designs etc being patented are in fact stiffling innovation in whole sectors.
With this pragmatic look, you have to choose between the *potential* innovation in MS Office (you wish!:D ), and the factual innovation in Open Source Movement, and small business software development. I for sure know what I choose.
As for how it is having software patents, for example, look at the US. We in Europe for sure shouldn't have to reimplement any dumb idea they get (they don't have to reimplement ours).
Please watch the BBC documentary about da Vinci (website here) or a similar show. They have made modern day implementations in techniques available to da Vinci. Quite a lot of them have actually worked (including my examples).
And yes, of course they would have been considered slightly loony blue-sky ones. All REALLY GREAT innovations and physics discoveries ARE loony blue-sky ideas. (If they weren't somebody would probably have thought about them before. I'm also not doubting to say there are many loony blue-sky ideas which really aren't great innovations).
Would it perhaps be possible to append to patentability demands, that the firm with the patent in question actually have to use it somehow (ie either manufacture widgets and put on the market or license the patent to widget-manufacturers)? That would solve your two problems.
It still doesn't solve problem number three though. Big, market-dominating companies getting themselves lots of "trivial" patents (which they ARE using), and using them to bully their competitors (who also have used the technology "forever" but perhaps don't have the same possibilities to use armies of lawyers in court).
By witholding patents from pure software, you're effectively stating that there is no significant innovation in the field.
Nope, you're not. You're saying that the innovation progress in the software field doesn't benefit from software patents. The patent system is built to encourage innovation - it's its purpose. If the legislating party (congress, parliament, bundestag, riksdag, whatever) deems that software patents indeed are hindering innovation in an area, it's perfectly legible to NOT award patents to the innovations in that area.
Give an example of a technology that was kept so secret by its original inventor that it had to be rediscovered by someone else. Just one will do.
You realize it isn't very likely we know any rediscovered ones? If it was kept secret, it's quite possible it didn't get known at all. If the inventor himself announced he was the first inventor, AFTER the rediscovery, he would normally be seen as a crackpot trying to steal the fame.
Still, I have an example. Leonardo da Vinci. He kept lots of his discoveries secret. Some of them, ie the diving suit, paraglider, etc, has since been rediscovered without the knowledge of da Vinci's work.
A "normal" computer I would define as a general-purpose computer, ie a computer on which the END USER self can decide what programs to run.
That includes your PC, your PDA, but not the dash computer.
A antique DOS box would also be counted. The problem comes with TiVos etc, which basically are general-purpose computers, but not accesible for the "normal" user.
As hardware programming becomes more usual, that's also a problem. Where do you really draw the line between hardware and software with bigger and bigger usage of programmable logic like FPGAs? Or with flash firmware reprogramming?
Basically, there isn't any difference. "Usual" PCs are quite usually used in industrial machinery etc to control them. There really isn't any difference.
The parliament solved this issue, by saying that anything involving forces or affecting "something physical" was allowable, and excluding "mere information processing" by its own clause.
Because the minority in the national parliament isn't getting represented (even though, in theory, the ministers should represent ALL of their countries, somehow they mysteriously tend to look what they themselves think more than the opinions of the whole parliament).
This means basically you only need about 25% (in theory) of the european voters to rule Europe. Win by 50.1/49.9 in some countries, and lose by 100/0 in the rest of them...
This is exactly the same reason many are thinking the elector system of the US is flawed...
What they have already released will stay released under GPL as it is.
They can (with permission of all copyright holders), if they wish to, also release it concurrently under another license (dual-licensing has happened before for different reasons). An example would be letting a commercial vendor use it for building a propietory solution (ie closed-source)
They could also (with permission of all copyright holders) change the licensing model, so future versions only become closed source. However, all old versions will still be available under GPL.
And why do modern boards still have serial and Parralell ports? They aren't used by 75% of the rest of the world, why are they even included as standard on ALL boards? On Some us because they still have some value but ALL?
Because the 25% of the world that DO use them think they're quite useful. And as explained in other parts of this thread, it's easier to build one mobo with them, than one with and one without.
For the uses:
Quite many people still have old, parallel printers. I for one do, and I'm not planning to throw my nice (though old) laser printer away anytime soon. Yes, it's possible to connect them with a mini print server, but why?
It's also quite common to connect homebrew electronics to the parallel port. For example, it's quite usual to connect a LCD to the parallel port. As an amateur, it's the easiest. Second shot I think is serial. Third one is USB - and believe me (I have tried to find a cheapish possible solution - a friend asked me if it was possible to connect a LCD by USB) - that one is complicated, and expensive! USB was never intended to be a standard used for homebrew circuits, it's far too complicated (of course that doesn't stop the most advanced amateurs, but for the rest of us?).
For uses of serial ports: I use mine for connecting to my TI-86 calculator, with a home-soldered cable. It's also quite common to give chip programmers etc serial interfaces. Also some industrial equipments as PLC:s and PT:s normally have serial interfaces. For everyday devices - modems! Sure, you can get a new modem with USB, but you're probably switching to broadband in a year anyway. Or you just use the modem for faxing, so the old one works just fine. Serial stuff seems to be more uncommon than parallel though, so just having one serial port is ok, I suppose.
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Nope, I'm certainly not, the post about MS+rent-seeking had been modded down, so I didn't see it... :/
PS. Damn image texts! Are they supposed to stop manual trolls as well as serious posters as scripts???
There is a limit though - when you start charging prices that are so high that you're losing a lot of your customers, the profit sinks (even though the profit per customer still rises (ideally), you get a lot less customers, and profits sink.)
You can make it more complicated (competitors influence each other, cost/quality-decisions, non-linear cost relationships, price sensitivity analysises, marketing mumbo-jumbo), but the basic principle still holds - the problem comes in attaining profit maximization.
And you consider that a bad thing? Doesn't that mean that they expect even nerds to get girlfriends today? :)
PS. Damn image text. It's oversensitive!
Yep. To me it usually suggests a driver that kills my soundcard, and a buggy Nvidia driver (somehow the only driver that works together with my TV card is a really old one. The +.01 version is fucked up, and the previous ones too...)
We should be wanting a system-wide grammar checker too.
But you are cheating! If you give users write-permission in Program Files, and let them alter parts of registry they shouldn't touch, etc, you are basically using "user accounts" which are more or less as potent as an admin account!
As a swedish student in Germany, I usually switch between PC-Swedish, Mac-Swedish, PC-German, PC-American. Argh! Actually I've considered a totally blank keyboard just because of that (it would be safe from my smaller sisters, too,though). Especially if you consider learning russian, greek, or perhaps arabic or something, it would payoff!
The work-around for this problem is to never, ever, have more than ~$500 on the account tied to the card. Also, all risks of the debit cards are a problem of the bank (if handle the card with care), but it's still annoying having to deal with the problems.
2. In 15th century Italy, having "loony blue-sky ideas" was a pretty good way to get foes in the church (da Vinci actually did and had to leave Italy for France). Staying friends with the church was a good way to be at least one head/life richer (compare: Galilei, Kopernikus, Luther, lots of "witches").
With this pragmatic look, you have to choose between the *potential* innovation in MS Office (you wish! :D ), and the factual innovation in Open Source Movement, and small business software development. I for sure know what I choose.
As for how it is having software patents, for example, look at the US. We in Europe for sure shouldn't have to reimplement any dumb idea they get (they don't have to reimplement ours).
And yes, of course they would have been considered slightly loony blue-sky ones. All REALLY GREAT innovations and physics discoveries ARE loony blue-sky ideas. (If they weren't somebody would probably have thought about them before. I'm also not doubting to say there are many loony blue-sky ideas which really aren't great innovations).
It still doesn't solve problem number three though. Big, market-dominating companies getting themselves lots of "trivial" patents (which they ARE using), and using them to bully their competitors (who also have used the technology "forever" but perhaps don't have the same possibilities to use armies of lawyers in court).
Nope, you're not. You're saying that the innovation progress in the software field doesn't benefit from software patents. The patent system is built to encourage innovation - it's its purpose. If the legislating party (congress, parliament, bundestag, riksdag, whatever) deems that software patents indeed are hindering innovation in an area, it's perfectly legible to NOT award patents to the innovations in that area.
You realize it isn't very likely we know any rediscovered ones? If it was kept secret, it's quite possible it didn't get known at all. If the inventor himself announced he was the first inventor, AFTER the rediscovery, he would normally be seen as a crackpot trying to steal the fame.
Still, I have an example. Leonardo da Vinci. He kept lots of his discoveries secret. Some of them, ie the diving suit, paraglider, etc, has since been rediscovered without the knowledge of da Vinci's work.
That includes your PC, your PDA, but not the dash computer.
A antique DOS box would also be counted. The problem comes with TiVos etc, which basically are general-purpose computers, but not accesible for the "normal" user.
As hardware programming becomes more usual, that's also a problem. Where do you really draw the line between hardware and software with bigger and bigger usage of programmable logic like FPGAs? Or with flash firmware reprogramming?
Basically, there isn't any difference. "Usual" PCs are quite usually used in industrial machinery etc to control them. There really isn't any difference.
The parliament solved this issue, by saying that anything involving forces or affecting "something physical" was allowable, and excluding "mere information processing" by its own clause.
This means basically you only need about 25% (in theory) of the european voters to rule Europe. Win by 50.1/49.9 in some countries, and lose by 100/0 in the rest of them...
This is exactly the same reason many are thinking the elector system of the US is flawed...
You didn't. Almost at least. You still have to pay for the ingredients, and you'll have to wait for the brewing process a while...
It is EXACTLY because of that I like Firefox. It's as lean as possible, works, and doesn't do anything unnecessary.
Odd that they would threaten their own creations?
"die" is one of the articles in German. Translation to English: "the".
They can (with permission of all copyright holders), if they wish to, also release it concurrently under another license (dual-licensing has happened before for different reasons). An example would be letting a commercial vendor use it for building a propietory solution (ie closed-source)
They could also (with permission of all copyright holders) change the licensing model, so future versions only become closed source. However, all old versions will still be available under GPL.
No, they're probably only outsorcing Windows. Not Office. :)
Already happened.
Of course not. The development is being outsourced...
well, don't really know where to buy them in Sweden. And my homebuilt one cost me like 3. There's a bunch of schedules here.
Because the 25% of the world that DO use them think they're quite useful. And as explained in other parts of this thread, it's easier to build one mobo with them, than one with and one without.
For the uses:
Quite many people still have old, parallel printers. I for one do, and I'm not planning to throw my nice (though old) laser printer away anytime soon. Yes, it's possible to connect them with a mini print server, but why?
It's also quite common to connect homebrew electronics to the parallel port. For example, it's quite usual to connect a LCD to the parallel port. As an amateur, it's the easiest. Second shot I think is serial. Third one is USB - and believe me (I have tried to find a cheapish possible solution - a friend asked me if it was possible to connect a LCD by USB) - that one is complicated, and expensive! USB was never intended to be a standard used for homebrew circuits, it's far too complicated (of course that doesn't stop the most advanced amateurs, but for the rest of us?).
For uses of serial ports: I use mine for connecting to my TI-86 calculator, with a home-soldered cable. It's also quite common to give chip programmers etc serial interfaces. Also some industrial equipments as PLC:s and PT:s normally have serial interfaces. For everyday devices - modems! Sure, you can get a new modem with USB, but you're probably switching to broadband in a year anyway. Or you just use the modem for faxing, so the old one works just fine. Serial stuff seems to be more uncommon than parallel though, so just having one serial port is ok, I suppose.