"Just like they did with BerkeleyDB... oh, wait..."
What do you mean "oh, wait"? Any serious development on BDB since Spleepy Cat aquisition? Is there any "flagship" for BDB except for OpenLDAP which is in competition with Sun's -now Oracle, identity management offers?
I won't foresay on the future of MySQL, but certainly there's no contradiction in "further development" and "make it fail"; that's called "designed to fail" and, were this the intention of Oracle it indeed would make a good strategy: if tomorrow Oracle announced "Madams, Sirs, the show ends here" regarding MySQL, tomorrow you'd have a fork and they'd lose momentum and grip so the day after tomorrow you'd probably would still have a flourishing MySQL ecosystem, only under a different name. If they follow development, only to let MySQL stagnate over some few years, they could manage to drive users slowly to a more insteresting field (be it free offers from Oracle as a "first dose for free" or even to Postgres as an entry point for "real" RBDMs to produce higher numbers of "real Linux/Unix DBA wannabes" that would look after Oracle on due time).
So what? It has no relevance. Smarter, within poker context, is the one that wins. I neither know nor need to know what are those needed skills to win at poker. The only thing that is of intereset is if it makes me win more or not. I take the pill and I see if I win more or less. It really doesn't matter if it's due to placebo, me being smarter or the pharma godess on my back telling me my opponent's cards.
"Legitimate distribution implies that you can produce a license from the owner of the copyright or his agent."
The grandparent poster said it properly but you seem not the be hearing: different countries, different laws.
"Talk of "Fair Use" is smoke and mirrors."
But talk of "private copy rights" is not.
"If you can name a court case where the defendant uploader successfully challenged the plaintiff's ownership of a copyright, I should very much like to hear of it. But I don't believe the beast exists."
At least in Spain, such a beast doesn't exist because potential plaintiffers know to avoid these kind of trials. They instead spread FUD, and lobby in order to change public opinion and then pass laws that would indeed make it illegal. In Spain, at least by now, sharing films or music for private usage without economic benefit is legal and a protected right.
"you're violating someone else's right to creative ownership"
To my knowledge there's nobody stating that creative ownership should be banned. In fact, your "creative ownership" is the only true right around this issue: the only way to violate it is lying since the only way I can imagine to violate "creative ownership" is telling something somebody did was in fact done by someone else.
What some people has a point with is not "creative ownership" but with government-granted monopoly on usage of publicly disseminated creations.
"you'd be depriving a children's hospital of the royalties"
Not if there shouldn't be royalties involved to start with, just the same you are not "depriving a childrens hospital of" your salary just because you are not simply giving it to them.
"it would cost possibly thousands of dollars to bring a barrel of oil into the United States."
Now I see. It is not that "oil would be unaffordable" but that "oil would be unaffordable... for the United States" (and then, given that USA is the greatest oil consumer, that would mean more oil for anybody else). Again, I see how this can be bad for USA but I don't see why this would be bad for China.
"China doesn't have the military capability to step in behind America."
Now I see too. USA economy being in bad shape would be bad for China because... USA owns nukes. Bad news: China owns nukes too.
"Their [China's] economy would also partially collapse"
That I know but since as you stated, China is still quite behind western countries and it has a massive potential internal market so it could go to look inwards, grow and fill the gap even faster so China would stregthen at the same time that other countries diminish.
"If China allowed the dollar to tank, the American economy would make the current crisis look like paradise. Oil would be unaffordable. Our reserves would be locked up for military use. The power vacuum left by a rapidly destabilized American military would fuck shit up."
I see how this would be bad for USA (and western world, in general) but I fail to understand how can this be but good for China's government with its massive ammount of reserves and internal market. Oh! and while there is oil it won't be unaffordable, just as expensive as possible. If nobody is able to buy it but for peanuts, that will be its price.
"they also don't mention workstation machines, virtualbox desktop virtualization, and whatever else sun does that oracle doesn't care about."
They should.
Solaris workstations have done quite a lot in retaining Solaris servers because they allowed the sysadmin desktop being akin to the server. The most linux you have on the sysadmin desktop, the less Solaris you will sell -guaranteed by the very history of Sun: Sun went into the corporate market on the dot.com boom because Solaris was what knew the freshmen the need by dozens those days. What do you think that will happen -that *is* happening, when those freshmen come with Linux background instead (and the given fact that Linux is "good enough" and much as Slowlaris was "good enough" in its day).
And what about virtualization? Current developers are less and less generalists and Java itself have done quite a lot dumbing them down. Virtualization is a very good idea for dumbed down Java-based developers to have different environments, try new developments, etc. Having a "for Oracle+Java" branding on virtualization can make a lot of profit for Oracle on the long run.
"So why is there still no Oracle 11g for Solaris/x86, when its already been released for most of the other major platforms, including Windows, Linux, AIX, HP-UX. It has been released for Solaris/Sparc, but as of yet, no 11g for Solaris/x86."
Tinfoil mode on: Because Oracle has been thinking about this buyout for quite some long months now. Since one of best Sun's cards was "if you are real serious about Oracle you should go with Solaris", it seems sensible to threaten FUD-wise with no more (or late or not prioritary) release on that platform so stock prices goes down and you can make a better deal. Now that Sun is on Oracle's hands see how much we have to wait for 11g to become avaliable on Solaris.
"I think mysql's popularity can be attributed to php, when I come to think about it."
I think is related to but not attributable to php. They both rised at the same time since they allowed "programming for the unwashed masses". PHP allowed non programmers (a vast majority of wanabes) to achieve some productivity they wouldn't dream of other platforms. MySQL allowed programmers without DB knowledge (a vast majority of programmers) to achieve some productivity they wouldn't dream of other RDBMs.
So now you have millions after millions of horrid lines of code based on horrid DB usage (not to say it is not possible to make something decent out of PHP+MySQL, heck, that's even possible out of Visual Basic, but that's not the norm but the exception) which tend to perpetuate since those horrid programers/DBAs have invested too much time on the platform now that they are horrid no more but simply bad.
""Magazine" used to mean a store house, changed to mean a weapons store, then a catalog of a weapons store, then it became both a periodical publication and an item held in a weapons store."
But it *still* a store house. By the way, my tape changer loads the tapes from... a tape magazine.
"Maybe we're just observing the moment in history when "occult" loses its verbal form and becomes purely associated with the Dark Arts?"
"If a person creates a product (whether it's physical or "imaginary") that a lot of people use, the person should be able to make a profit from it. Any system that denies this profit from this creator is faulty."
""He has a right to make a profit" is synonymous with "He has a right to TRY and make a profit", via Locke"
No, it isn't, not specially if talking about copy rights, since "labour" is not defined elsewhere.
Implicit on Locke there are three unstated premises: 1) That we know what labour is. Locke's environment is basically coming out feudalism, in which people has not inherent right to profit from their labour, since it belongs to their master (basically, a bit mild down form of slavery). But labour is not "just" labouring lands or smithing anymore. Specifically, is it labour doing something no one asked me for? Yesterday I was stopped at a traffic lights. Suddenly came a gipsy cleaning my windscreen. Is that labour? Had he a right to make a profit out of that labour I didn't ask him to do? The obvious answer is "no" to both questions. As a general matter, is it labour somebody begging in the street? He is there, using his time and effort so, has he a right to profit from his endevour? Again, the answer is clearly "no". 2) The second unstated premise is that "labour" must be something so stated by two parties in agreement. Be it writing a song, cleaning a windscreen or whatever, it is labour when both the producer and the consumer so agree. Within this context Locke's assertion implies that nobody can force a labour to any other (ala feudalism or slavery). 3) Then, it rises a more general matter implied not only in Locke's but in Hobbes and Adam Smith too: that a society must give credit to its contracts: *once* you can't force me onto labour, *and* you and me agreed at a labour for a price *then* the labouring part has the right for the contract to be credited and agreed profit to be made.
Now, please, revise my previous paragraphs and see how there is no inherent right to profit from something unasked for (or else I'll say these lines are my labour and then you owe me my rightful profit) and how that applies to modern day copyright-related "labours".
The most you can say is that regarding copyrights there's some kind of implicit social contract so even if there's no previously agreed contract, it is expected out of context and therefor it should be credited (that's what happens, more or less, at a restaurant: the bill is not produced till the end of the comercial relationship but then there's the implicit agreement that the client will honour it). But again, these kinds of "social contracts" are only valid as long as society honours them. Well, I for one don't honour my side of the "agreement": No, I don't feel oweing anything to Metallica for producing some songs I didn't ask them for just as I don't feel oweing anything to the gipsy that unaskedly cleaned my windscreen yesterday.
Where the hell did you got that? From RIAA or Walt Disney Corp.?
No, he has no right to make a profit. Nobody has.
But he has a right to *try*.
I think it has been cited so many times, but here goes again, from Heinlein:
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of protecting such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit."
"The phenomenon described in the article saddens me, but it is supported by theory. I have worried about this based on my limited reading about network theory. The popularity of a cultural work is largely a result not of any inherent qualities of the work itself, but of of the activities of the audience. If I like a piece of music, I am likely to tell my friends. They tell their friends, and so on and so on."
Quite a good argument, but also incomplete (both on you and on the opening news).
Truly, network effect can and probably will make hits to be even more "hitting", so to say. But the deeper substance is the almost trivial fact that p2p is neither more nor less than a distribution channel. But a distribution channel with an important quality: it almost brings distribution costs to zero and it does it on a very neutral manner: it brings almost to zero distribution costs to Britney Spears as it does to an indy artist... in India, and both can take the same advantage out of it.
But then, the popstar can take the marketing machine of the record industry to her benefit which the indie can not. So, overall, we come from a situation of 1-0 to a 2-1, which is overall better for the indie.
It really doesn't matter that CBS, if it finds a way to "tame" p2p will be able to go from selling one bazillion copies to two bazillions but that some interesting group from Nowhereinstan will be able to go from being heard by zero people to ten millions, so good for them.
And in the end this is a positive outcome, but what if the really bad outcome profetized by the RIAA et al. becomes true and nobody pays a penny for new music? Well, I don't see *any* real damaged done -except for those already making bazillions with the current 'statu quo', of course. And I don't really feel pain if some pop star must downgrade his Gulfstream IV to a Gulfstream III... hell, I don't feel pain even if he has to resort to only what can make with live performances and that only gives as much money as the average US worker.
Record companies killed old-school artists that made 40~60 minutes concerts in favour of almost "use-n-trash" 2 minutes pop hits and nobody seems to miss all those lost Mozarts, Beethovens, etc. less I'll miss future lost Britney Spears of tomorrow.
Now, I'll return to this Vivaldi's Concerto per Archi e Cembalo C major RV 116 I'm listening to.
"But that's nonsense, because if the pricing weren't affordable relative to value customers would 'leave it' and the monopoly would shrink in size."
The value of free market is the so-called invisible hand that will lead to the best output for the money a consumer puts in the hands of the producer by means of competency since this will mean an increase of services and overall richness (more bang for your dollars). This "invisible hand" cannot act if there's no competency.
It's true that a non-statal monopoly won't go if it rises prices beyond the benefit the consumer can get from the service*1, but that's not the point of free market. The point of free market is that it is the producer the one that must lower their benefits to its acceptable minimum because of pressure from its competitors (or won't enter the market) not the consumer growing its expenditures to its acceptable maximum because this will lead to overall less services and less richness.
"If Microsoft"
Quite a very interesting example in that you really don't need to look at its actual bussiness practices to know something *must* be rotten there. Operative systems doesn't tend themselves to natural monopolies, thus if the market was working properly theory predicts OS vendors' net benefits would naturally tend to something between 5 to 15%; the fact that Microsoft makes profits ranging from 200 to 400% clearly indicates that it must be somehow "cheating".
*1 But it still can try leveraging bundled monopolies; then it'll be able to blood out the consumer up to the point of no benefit for the sum of the bundled services.
"I also think it's because "broadband" is quite more ambigious than water and power, they're much more binary like served/not served."
You think this because water and power are so well stablished and serviced you already forgot about how lame they can be.
Your home is two flatted? Sorry but forget about taking a shower on the high floor; not enough water pressure. Of course, in august watter supply will be offered just four hours a day.
What do you mean, 15KW for your home? We'll offer you just 6KW, so it will your wash machine or your air conditioner, but won't be able to use both of them at the same time. Oh, and every day from 23:00 to 8:00 you will see how your lamps bright much less; and you will have cuts at least monthly, and spikes will be usual (hey, but that boosts market; you'll have to renew your VCR yearly).
Telecoms (specially Internet) at home are still maturing. The problem is economics have changed you much that it is still to be seen if they will be able to be as stable and respectable as water/electricity in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
"Just like they did with BerkeleyDB ... oh, wait..."
What do you mean "oh, wait"? Any serious development on BDB since Spleepy Cat aquisition? Is there any "flagship" for BDB except for OpenLDAP which is in competition with Sun's -now Oracle, identity management offers?
I won't foresay on the future of MySQL, but certainly there's no contradiction in "further development" and "make it fail"; that's called "designed to fail" and, were this the intention of Oracle it indeed would make a good strategy: if tomorrow Oracle announced "Madams, Sirs, the show ends here" regarding MySQL, tomorrow you'd have a fork and they'd lose momentum and grip so the day after tomorrow you'd probably would still have a flourishing MySQL ecosystem, only under a different name. If they follow development, only to let MySQL stagnate over some few years, they could manage to drive users slowly to a more insteresting field (be it free offers from Oracle as a "first dose for free" or even to Postgres as an entry point for "real" RBDMs to produce higher numbers of "real Linux/Unix DBA wannabes" that would look after Oracle on due time).
"And if it was all Solaris, you could create one JumpStart server, an install script and you're set."
And if it was all Debian or Ubuntu, you could create one preseed server, an install config file and you're set.
That the parent poster didn't know about it only shows that people aren't born knowledgeable but nothing else. So, what was your point again?
"No, I don't. Poker requires a number of skills."
So what? It has no relevance. Smarter, within poker context, is the one that wins. I neither know nor need to know what are those needed skills to win at poker. The only thing that is of intereset is if it makes me win more or not. I take the pill and I see if I win more or less. It really doesn't matter if it's due to placebo, me being smarter or the pharma godess on my back telling me my opponent's cards.
""Smarter" is a fairly vague term. Smarter how?"
Easy answer: "smarter" for the thing at hand. If I were a proffesional poker gambler it's clear what "smarter" means, don't you think so?
"I would say that a scientist or detective without creativity could be hyper intelligent and still not be able to produce a usable result"
Then he is not smarter within context.
"Legitimate distribution implies that you can produce a license from the owner of the copyright or his agent."
The grandparent poster said it properly but you seem not the be hearing: different countries, different laws.
"Talk of "Fair Use" is smoke and mirrors."
But talk of "private copy rights" is not.
"If you can name a court case where the defendant uploader successfully challenged the plaintiff's ownership of a copyright, I should very much like to hear of it. But I don't believe the beast exists."
At least in Spain, such a beast doesn't exist because potential plaintiffers know to avoid these kind of trials. They instead spread FUD, and lobby in order to change public opinion and then pass laws that would indeed make it illegal. In Spain, at least by now, sharing films or music for private usage without economic benefit is legal and a protected right.
"you're violating someone else's right to creative ownership"
To my knowledge there's nobody stating that creative ownership should be banned. In fact, your "creative ownership" is the only true right around this issue: the only way to violate it is lying since the only way I can imagine to violate "creative ownership" is telling something somebody did was in fact done by someone else.
What some people has a point with is not "creative ownership" but with government-granted monopoly on usage of publicly disseminated creations.
"you'd be depriving a children's hospital of the royalties"
Not if there shouldn't be royalties involved to start with, just the same you are not "depriving a childrens hospital of" your salary just because you are not simply giving it to them.
"As it is, I am really starting to question whether the Nuremberg trials were just "victor's justice.""
They trialed german criminals but there weren't a word about, say, Dresden bombing and its 25.000 civilian casualties. Do you need more?
"Why not just have sustainable environmental practices"
So in order to avoid production being reduced tenfold we will use practices that will reduce production tenfold.
"it would cost possibly thousands of dollars to bring a barrel of oil into the United States."
Now I see. It is not that "oil would be unaffordable" but that "oil would be unaffordable... for the United States" (and then, given that USA is the greatest oil consumer, that would mean more oil for anybody else). Again, I see how this can be bad for USA but I don't see why this would be bad for China.
"China doesn't have the military capability to step in behind America."
Now I see too. USA economy being in bad shape would be bad for China because... USA owns nukes. Bad news: China owns nukes too.
"Their [China's] economy would also partially collapse"
That I know but since as you stated, China is still quite behind western countries and it has a massive potential internal market so it could go to look inwards, grow and fill the gap even faster so China would stregthen at the same time that other countries diminish.
"Then the system isn't secure. If the data required to sign code to run on your machine is on your machine"
Who said that? Not me, obviously.
"This system could be applied to PCs, but the problem then is who is authorized to sign code to run on your machine?"
My machine, you say? The answer is obvious, then: me.
"If China allowed the dollar to tank, the American economy would make the current crisis look like paradise. Oil would be unaffordable. Our reserves would be locked up for military use. The power vacuum left by a rapidly destabilized American military would fuck shit up."
I see how this would be bad for USA (and western world, in general) but I fail to understand how can this be but good for China's government with its massive ammount of reserves and internal market. Oh! and while there is oil it won't be unaffordable, just as expensive as possible. If nobody is able to buy it but for peanuts, that will be its price.
"I'd rather have guns than gold."
Hummm... gold guns, what an idea!
"Why not hoard a commodity whose price is more stable?"
Hummm... I propose sea water.
"Of course even the courts are run by old people who think computers only run Windows"
Curious you mention it since those "old people" are precisely the most suited to remember a time when computers were not just "Windows devices".
"they also don't mention workstation machines, virtualbox desktop virtualization, and whatever else sun does that oracle doesn't care about."
They should.
Solaris workstations have done quite a lot in retaining Solaris servers because they allowed the sysadmin desktop being akin to the server. The most linux you have on the sysadmin desktop, the less Solaris you will sell -guaranteed by the very history of Sun: Sun went into the corporate market on the dot.com boom because Solaris was what knew the freshmen the need by dozens those days. What do you think that will happen -that *is* happening, when those freshmen come with Linux background instead (and the given fact that Linux is "good enough" and much as Slowlaris was "good enough" in its day).
And what about virtualization? Current developers are less and less generalists and Java itself have done quite a lot dumbing them down. Virtualization is a very good idea for dumbed down Java-based developers to have different environments, try new developments, etc. Having a "for Oracle+Java" branding on virtualization can make a lot of profit for Oracle on the long run.
"so anyway, RIP opensolaris."
This, I think, is the most probable outcome.
"So why is there still no Oracle 11g for Solaris/x86, when its already been released for most of the other major platforms, including Windows, Linux, AIX, HP-UX. It has been released for Solaris/Sparc, but as of yet, no 11g for Solaris/x86."
Tinfoil mode on: Because Oracle has been thinking about this buyout for quite some long months now. Since one of best Sun's cards was "if you are real serious about Oracle you should go with Solaris", it seems sensible to threaten FUD-wise with no more (or late or not prioritary) release on that platform so stock prices goes down and you can make a better deal. Now that Sun is on Oracle's hands see how much we have to wait for 11g to become avaliable on Solaris.
"I think mysql's popularity can be attributed to php, when I come to think about it."
I think is related to but not attributable to php. They both rised at the same time since they allowed "programming for the unwashed masses". PHP allowed non programmers (a vast majority of wanabes) to achieve some productivity they wouldn't dream of other platforms. MySQL allowed programmers without DB knowledge (a vast majority of programmers) to achieve some productivity they wouldn't dream of other RDBMs.
So now you have millions after millions of horrid lines of code based on horrid DB usage (not to say it is not possible to make something decent out of PHP+MySQL, heck, that's even possible out of Visual Basic, but that's not the norm but the exception) which tend to perpetuate since those horrid programers/DBAs have invested too much time on the platform now that they are horrid no more but simply bad.
""Magazine" used to mean a store house, changed to mean a weapons store, then a catalog of a weapons store, then it became both a periodical publication and an item held in a weapons store."
But it *still* a store house. By the way, my tape changer loads the tapes from... a tape magazine.
"Maybe we're just observing the moment in history when "occult" loses its verbal form and becomes purely associated with the Dark Arts?"
That maybe is true, but future is occulted to me.
"If a person creates a product (whether it's physical or "imaginary") that a lot of people use, the person should be able to make a profit from it. Any system that denies this profit from this creator is faulty."
Then most science is faulty.
""He has a right to make a profit" is synonymous with "He has a right to TRY and make a profit", via Locke"
No, it isn't, not specially if talking about copy rights, since "labour" is not defined elsewhere.
Implicit on Locke there are three unstated premises:
1) That we know what labour is. Locke's environment is basically coming out feudalism, in which people has not inherent right to profit from their labour, since it belongs to their master (basically, a bit mild down form of slavery). But labour is not "just" labouring lands or smithing anymore. Specifically, is it labour doing something no one asked me for? Yesterday I was stopped at a traffic lights. Suddenly came a gipsy cleaning my windscreen. Is that labour? Had he a right to make a profit out of that labour I didn't ask him to do? The obvious answer is "no" to both questions. As a general matter, is it labour somebody begging in the street? He is there, using his time and effort so, has he a right to profit from his endevour? Again, the answer is clearly "no".
2) The second unstated premise is that "labour" must be something so stated by two parties in agreement. Be it writing a song, cleaning a windscreen or whatever, it is labour when both the producer and the consumer so agree. Within this context Locke's assertion implies that nobody can force a labour to any other (ala feudalism or slavery).
3) Then, it rises a more general matter implied not only in Locke's but in Hobbes and Adam Smith too: that a society must give credit to its contracts: *once* you can't force me onto labour, *and* you and me agreed at a labour for a price *then* the labouring part has the right for the contract to be credited and agreed profit to be made.
Now, please, revise my previous paragraphs and see how there is no inherent right to profit from something unasked for (or else I'll say these lines are my labour and then you owe me my rightful profit) and how that applies to modern day copyright-related "labours".
The most you can say is that regarding copyrights there's some kind of implicit social contract so even if there's no previously agreed contract, it is expected out of context and therefor it should be credited (that's what happens, more or less, at a restaurant: the bill is not produced till the end of the comercial relationship but then there's the implicit agreement that the client will honour it). But again, these kinds of "social contracts" are only valid as long as society honours them. Well, I for one don't honour my side of the "agreement": No, I don't feel oweing anything to Metallica for producing some songs I didn't ask them for just as I don't feel oweing anything to the gipsy that unaskedly cleaned my windscreen yesterday.
"He has a right to make a profit"
Where the hell did you got that? From RIAA or Walt Disney Corp.?
No, he has no right to make a profit. Nobody has.
But he has a right to *try*.
I think it has been cited so many times, but here goes again, from Heinlein:
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of protecting such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit."
"The phenomenon described in the article saddens me, but it is supported by theory. I have worried about this based on my limited reading about network theory. The popularity of a cultural work is largely a result not of any inherent qualities of the work itself, but of of the activities of the audience. If I like a piece of music, I am likely to tell my friends. They tell their friends, and so on and so on."
Quite a good argument, but also incomplete (both on you and on the opening news).
Truly, network effect can and probably will make hits to be even more "hitting", so to say. But the deeper substance is the almost trivial fact that p2p is neither more nor less than a distribution channel. But a distribution channel with an important quality: it almost brings distribution costs to zero and it does it on a very neutral manner: it brings almost to zero distribution costs to Britney Spears as it does to an indy artist... in India, and both can take the same advantage out of it.
But then, the popstar can take the marketing machine of the record industry to her benefit which the indie can not. So, overall, we come from a situation of 1-0 to a 2-1, which is overall better for the indie.
It really doesn't matter that CBS, if it finds a way to "tame" p2p will be able to go from selling one bazillion copies to two bazillions but that some interesting group from Nowhereinstan will be able to go from being heard by zero people to ten millions, so good for them.
And in the end this is a positive outcome, but what if the really bad outcome profetized by the RIAA et al. becomes true and nobody pays a penny for new music? Well, I don't see *any* real damaged done -except for those already making bazillions with the current 'statu quo', of course. And I don't really feel pain if some pop star must downgrade his Gulfstream IV to a Gulfstream III... hell, I don't feel pain even if he has to resort to only what can make with live performances and that only gives as much money as the average US worker.
Record companies killed old-school artists that made 40~60 minutes concerts in favour of almost "use-n-trash" 2 minutes pop hits and nobody seems to miss all those lost Mozarts, Beethovens, etc. less I'll miss future lost Britney Spears of tomorrow.
Now, I'll return to this Vivaldi's Concerto per Archi e Cembalo C major RV 116 I'm listening to.
"But that's nonsense, because if the pricing weren't affordable relative to value customers would 'leave it' and the monopoly would shrink in size."
The value of free market is the so-called invisible hand that will lead to the best output for the money a consumer puts in the hands of the producer by means of competency since this will mean an increase of services and overall richness (more bang for your dollars). This "invisible hand" cannot act if there's no competency.
It's true that a non-statal monopoly won't go if it rises prices beyond the benefit the consumer can get from the service*1, but that's not the point of free market. The point of free market is that it is the producer the one that must lower their benefits to its acceptable minimum because of pressure from its competitors (or won't enter the market) not the consumer growing its expenditures to its acceptable maximum because this will lead to overall less services and less richness.
"If Microsoft"
Quite a very interesting example in that you really don't need to look at its actual bussiness practices to know something *must* be rotten there. Operative systems doesn't tend themselves to natural monopolies, thus if the market was working properly theory predicts OS vendors' net benefits would naturally tend to something between 5 to 15%; the fact that Microsoft makes profits ranging from 200 to 400% clearly indicates that it must be somehow "cheating".
*1 But it still can try leveraging bundled monopolies; then it'll be able to blood out the consumer up to the point of no benefit for the sum of the bundled services.
"I also think it's because "broadband" is quite more ambigious than water and power, they're much more binary like served/not served."
You think this because water and power are so well stablished and serviced you already forgot about how lame they can be.
Your home is two flatted? Sorry but forget about taking a shower on the high floor; not enough water pressure. Of course, in august watter supply will be offered just four hours a day.
What do you mean, 15KW for your home? We'll offer you just 6KW, so it will your wash machine or your air conditioner, but won't be able to use both of them at the same time. Oh, and every day from 23:00 to 8:00 you will see how your lamps bright much less; and you will have cuts at least monthly, and spikes will be usual (hey, but that boosts market; you'll have to renew your VCR yearly).
Telecoms (specially Internet) at home are still maturing. The problem is economics have changed you much that it is still to be seen if they will be able to be as stable and respectable as water/electricity in the future.