There is more than one way to skin a cat. I don't see why their model is the problem everyone posting here makes it out to be.
If you don't like it, so what? You aren't in their target market.
You see, you are presuming that everyone want to take the limited music with them and/or that one cares whether the music works after 30 days. I don't. Let me explain why:
I'm not interested in renting music I already know about. I want to rent music I don't know about, so I can decide if I want to buy it.
While the cost aspects (due to the ads) aren't a perfect analogy, think of this like test driving a car. I want to drive the car for a short period of time on reasonable terms, not only experience it under 25 MPH in some dealer lot. DRM gives me the ability to legally 'test drive' the music. I want to sample music - meaning the whole song (or close to it), not some maybe-but-perhaps-not-really-representative 30 second sound-byte that Apple provides. I already use AmieStreet.com (since the samples are much longer), and I'm open to other alternatives (yes, I know about Napster and Rhapsody, and no, I'm not shelling out $10 a month)
Once I sample a song and decide I like it, I will go acquire the music elsewhere - either on a physical CD (if I like enough songs on an album) or though another source (iTunes, etc.). That will not possess DRM, since I have never paid for (and don't intend to pay for) DRMed music. [That's like buying the car you test drove, for those following the analogy]
The purchased song will get placed on my iPod so that I can take it with me. I'm happy, I'm only transporting music I like, and their business model works in the process, because I can use them to explore. So I'm sorry, but I'm failing to see why their model isn't a good one.
The problem I've experienced in IT is the problem of information asymmetry, exactly the problem in The Market for Lemons. I know what I'm worth as part of an IT position, but employers are generally hiring and paying based on the assumption that (or the need for) a lemon... because that's how the economic "game" plays out. If you have become an "expert mechanic" in hiring IT people, then I have great respect for you.
I would note the asymmetry runs the other way as well. For example, I got really sick of trying to find a good IT employer. Repeated interviews get old, burn vacation, and it's time and energy I could spend elsewhere. I haven't found a reliable list of "good" IT employers so I can constrain the interview list enough to make the process worthwhile.
Hence, I don't play the game. I get better pay, similar hours, and more visibility in a sales role. It has its own pains and challenges, and I certainly wouldn't mind going back to the IT world, but I won't do it at the rate the IT has demonstrated it will pay (and with the treatment usually given to the IT team)
Not True. If copyright is turned off, then it operates like the public domain. Someone can modify GPL code and ship a binary that includes the modified code without providing you the original. That is not the same as what the GPL today provides.
Piracy is an economic indicator that you are not letting the market balance itself.
So what?
Specifically, piracy is caused by artificially fixing prices too high. People refuse to buy the good since it is too expensive, but still demand the good, so they steal/copy it in order to obtain it.
Yea, I wouldn't use "artificially", but the rest is accurate.
The only way to discourage piracy is to lower your price to the point that people would rather buy "the real deal" than a cheap knockoff.
Which is a perception problem, rather than a real problem. There is *NO* economic principle stating that profit maximization occurs at the point of supply/demand balance. For example, the company I work for regularly is running at 70-80% capacity, but that maximizes profit (we'd have to lower prices so far to get to 100% capacity that we would not be profitable). Companies maximize profit, not volume.
By extension, the fact that piracy exists is not always "bad" from a profit perspective. (I'll leave all the ethics aside). The bonus that companies get in this case is that it *looks* bad, because our base understanding is one where the marginal cost of production is measurable. Combined with a very clever spin implying copyright infringement is "theft"... and they can get benefits from government, the media, etc. The challenge for consumers, government, and the media is to separate the real problems from the perception problems, a skill many involved have demonstrated they do not possess.
The fact that American companies do not do this, is an injustice to the american people. For America to claim to be the archetypical capitalistic economy yet still stifle innovation for the accrueing of profit is something we shouldn't stand for.
While I understand that people love black and white/good and evil stories, this isn't that simple.
CDMA is often deployed in the United States because the technology has been developed for larger cell sizes than the GSM/GPRS/EDGE systems deployed in Europe. This is highly beneficial in areas where population density is low (think suburbs). Deploying GSM across the United States would be significantly more expensive than deploying CDMA.
GSM systems using SIM cards were highly advantageous in allowing users to keep a single (expensive) phone and to purchase multiple SIM cards in different countries if they were moving around Europe. The political boundaries and separate companies operating the networks almost demanded the GSM design. The lack of a contiguous network (back when GSM was developed - universal Europe roaming is now relatively common) drove the separation of the phone from the connection identifier (part of the SIM card). This situation doesn't exist in the United States, because the FCC auctions off frequencies in extremely large geographic blocks, and the wireless providers were very quick to provide nationwide coverage (even if it did have large roaming fees 5+ years ago)
There are also other subtleties. CDMA is a US-developed technology, while GSM/GPRS/EDGE was developed in Europe. If you don't think that makes a difference to other countries deploying the systems, then you're wrong. These volume differences at the manufacturing level then impact price of the basestation systems... and the advantages of GSM drove countries with large population densities (think most of Asia) to deploy it. It is areas with larger rural populations (Brazil and parts of India, where CDMA is successful)
The net effect of using CDMA makes it much more difficult to separate the phone from the network. The system wasn't designed for it. Yes, there are identifiers in the phone that would allow it, but having separate SIM devices (the GSM model) is much more flexible and much of the basis for the difference in corporate behavior on the network (it's easy to not activate a phone due to a certain policy, but very hard not to allow use of a device where the only authentication is from a SIM card, so the service provider doesn't know what the hardware is)
RSA is based on a computationally difficult calculation (factoring large numbers). The difference is that there is a secret key and a public key (same with SSL/TLS). Reconstructing the secret key from the public key is computationally difficult (NP-complete).
AACS is a form of a symmetric key system. There is some complicated math in calculating the derivative keys and allowing key revocation (the AACS encryption method is available on the net), but fundamentallly, they have a problem: The key to decode the disk must be present on the disc. Because this is a symmetric system (again, requiring some calculation from the master key in a hardware device doesn't complicate it that much), it simply cannot be made to be as secure as a system with a secret key. "Hacking" AACS doesn't actually require re-derivation from the master key, since there are so many opportunities to intercept the derived keys when they are "in flight" (in software decoders, for example)
The states don't have a right to charge taxes on stuff shipped across state lines. Why are we even having this discussion?
Not true. Read ARMCO INC. v. HARDESTY, 467 U.S. 638 (1984); specifically: "Under the Commerce Clause, a State may not tax a transaction or incident more heavily when it crosses state lines than when it occurs entirely within the State." (emphasis added).
Thus, use taxes CAN be charged on items shipped across state lines. For a specific example, feel free to download Vermont's state tax booklet and read the instructions for line 27 (on page 7 of the PDF).
To save Vermont some bandwidth, let me quote the relevant section: "Use Tax applies to purchases on which sales tax has not been charged, but are subject to sales tax. This includes purchases from a mail-order house or catalog, over the Internet, from an out-of-state retailer, or from any retailer who did not charge sales tax."
This is perfectly legal, even under the existing laws, because the Vermont use tax is grandfathered - it existed long before the US government prevented sales tax on Internet purchases.
Value is defined as the exchange value (price) of goods or services.
That is a narrow and neoeconomic point of view. Since we're to quoting Wikipedia as an authorative source, I encourage you to read the definition of Economic Value on Wikipedia. Specifically, the second and third paragraphs under "The various explanations"
As the marginal cost of production of a unit of software is damn near 0 (its fractions of a penny of electricity), software does not have scarcity. Thus it has no value.
In neoclassical economics, where value is measured relative to supply, you may be correct. However, there are other definitions of value (which is part of why this thread branch has gone around in circles)
However, if you go back to classical economics and then to Marx, you will find the concepts of use-value and exchange value. Software would generally have a non-zero use-value (because using it creates economic efficiency and therefore produces benefits to the user) and an exchange value (the cost in money) that should approach zero (to your point about marginal cost of production).
However, we find that isn't true (go look at the cost of Microsoft Office). This is true due to the cost of performing a transition to a new software program (file compatibiltiy, training, etc.). Due to these costs, Microsoft (and others) can value price their product. As long as the (classical economic) value provided by their product is greater than that of an open source/free solution, companies will continue to purchase Office.
On the other hand, I agree that we need a new model. Classical economics handles software just fine; it's just that neoclassical economics (heavily dependent upon scarcity) doesn't handle software well. It's not that classical economics doesn't have its own problems... so I agree there is a place for a new model.
a few naysayers are sticking with the notion that there is some value exchanged by adding all kinds of indirect/psychological benefits.
If you actually understood the concept of value, you would realize that you just proved the point of those naysayers. If there is a psychological benefit, then value was created. As I pointed out in my other post, Value = Benefit - Cost - Risk. The lack of cost does not indicate there was no value created.
There is _no_ exchange of value
Wrong. You now receive the benefits of not having to rewrite the functions contained within libpng. You are avoiding development expense, which has value (although it's cost avoidance and not direct value creation).
Free (as in speech and beer) software violates the premise of a market. There is no exchange of value.
Oh my. Back to Marketing 101.
Value = Benefit - Cost or if you prefer: Value = Benefit - Cost - Risk (if you don't consider risk a cost)
Free (as in speech and beer) only speaks to the Cost portion of the value equation.
If the software provides benefit, such as a reduced time to perform a specific task, then it still has value, even if it is zero cost.
Not to mention, the open source aspect CERTAINLY has both positive aspects to risk (you are not dependent on the survival of a single supplier) and negative aspects to risk (witness Microsoft's threats about patents).
One key comment that Mark makes in the interview is that he is for free software. By this I assume he means obtaining software development services for free (as opposed to support).
Logical Fallacy #1: Straw Man. You are substituting a different definition, without knowing the real position
What does a desire for free software really mean then? From a developer's standpoint, one implication is that a software developer's services have little value. Or perhaps it means the specific software under discussion has little value.
Logical Fallacy #2: False Dilemma. Because you start to draw conclusions immediately after these two statements, you give this as an either-or proposition, when both of your suggestions may be false. It is possible that free software is software where the freedom to customize the software trumps all other possibilties. It is also possible that the increased value produced by the free software greatly exceeds the development expense for the software. This may lead to an economic situation where an organization doesn't need to recover the development expense, and the network effect can be used to have others help to defer the expense.
Clearly software has value, particularly in new areas.
Just because a word processor has existed for a while does not mean it doesn't deliver value. It may be commoditized in its *price* and therefore be capable of delivering value at a low *cost*, but you are misinterpreting the concept of value.
So what exactly does he mean? We're in the software development business which requires defining things a bit more precisely kinda like in mathematics or law.
But humorously, you're debating economics, which is a heck of a lot less defined than mathematics or law.
The individual provider of software development services is saying I am a software developer and I am giving away value for free.
Logical Fallacy #3: False Equality Value = benefit - cost - risk. You are equating the lack of cost (a developer giving away their services) with giving away value for free. Without considering the other parts of the value equation (such as personal benefits received from the development, like when a developer "scratches their own itch"), you are not creating a well-formed association between value and cost.
But how can that mode of working produce this top system on par with systems in which the developers are giving their all day in and day out?
Logical Fallacy #4: Confusing Cause and Effect, Appeal to Consequences of a Common Belief, Appeal to a common practice. Generally, you have submitted no evidence that free systems cannot produce results that are on par or better than their commercial counterparts. While the software that surrounds Linux can be challenging at times, the core operating system is widely used in embedded and server environments, thus providing a counter-example to your claim.
[Standards]
Logical Fallacy #5: Red Herring. Development of standards - even ad-hoc ones - is different than software development. While it may impact the total value of free software, it does not undermine the basic economics that lead to free software.
We can go on and on with this kind of analysis
Please don't...
...but at the end I feel the conclusion from his goal is that (a) either software of inferior sustainable value is produced, (b) there has been too much value assigned to that particular line of software development in the marketplace, or (c) there is such massive altruism in the developer community to give so much software development value away for free.
Logical Fallacy #5: False Dilemma. At least you have three choices this time... but the point still stands that the issue is far more complicated than you make it out to be, and value can be achieved in ways that are not considered in your analysis.
It is written like a children's book and so it has short 3-6 word phrases put together. Which does not make for a nice long readable sentence like the (mispelled) non-sense I am putting here.
Good writing mixes long and short sentences, because writing entirely composed of long sentences can be hard to read. I actually think the point you are trying to make is similar to what others are also highlighting. AKAImBatman makes the point about emphasis, which can be established in text by altering the meter of the sentences. The new format destroys this information. By using color changes and formatting to increase reading speed, the emphasis may be changed from communicating information to communicating data.
===
The paragraph I wrote above is crafted to bring attention to the short sentence: "The new format destroys this information". In fact, that's all I really want people to remember - the rest is for context. Certainly, the message isn't as strong as it could be (I'm writing this in a matter of minutes, not revising over the course of hours), but the meter creates the emphasis. Given the use of color and formatting to convert longer phrases into short blocks (thus eliminating meter), I am curious how well that summary message would be transferred if my paragraph were reformatted in the "Live Ink" layout.
...if you were talking about using proprietary code in the first step then I could imagine that you might have some kind of argument
No need for imagination. Go read Sega v. Accolade.
it's GPL code man.. you're free to do whatever you want with it
NO. You are Free to do whatever the license grants you the right to do. From GPL Section 2(b): "You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License." (emphasis added)
You are proposing to directly leverage GPL code to develop new code. That new code and the combined code are a derivative work of the GPL code.
Thus, to directly answer your question: Yes, there is something wrong with what you are proposing. No lawyer would want you to do it, because the work you produce in steps 2 and 3 is a derivative work of GPL code, and thus must be licensed under the GPL to avoid copyright infringement.
The answer is pretty clear. General purpose computers that can have software installed are a tool that must be monitored, controlled and administered. Giving one to a user and leaving them alone with it is a reciepe for disaster. Just like the disaster with spam, botnets and viruses we are seeing right now.
I'm sure there are many large companies - ones that would love to protect the status quo - that would greatly support your proposal.
I think what you propose is crazy.
You have failed to follow through the implementation and resulting consequences of this action.
The problem isn't only general purpose computers, it is general purpose processors running general purpose operating systems. Making it 'embedded' doesn't necessarily solve the problem. For example, there have been vulnerabilities in various routers over the past few years, and your action would not solve those issues. You provide no evidence that preventing user installation will protect the system in any fashion. The system would still have underlying x86, PPC, ARM or MIPS processor which could run arbitrary code.
First, how do you allow people to get a system where they can write software? It is both systematically difficult, and is a practical impossibility with current systems. Given that many products have some form of scripting built in (including Microsoft Office, and about every version of *nix there is), it is difficult to prevent someone who is even marginally capable from writing software. For example, when I was a university student, there were strict policies that prevented the compilation of software on the community Unix system (Sun servers at the time). However, given that sh, csh, and tcsh were all available on the system, I could perform just about any action I wanted on that system, as far as software is concerned. That's not to say it wasn't slow compared to a compiled program (it WAS), but it was almost impossible for them to detect or prevent.
One potential (and partial) solution to this is so-called the 'trusted computing' model, which would only allow 'certified' software to run on a computer. I posit without proof that the challenge of preventing ANY method of forging electronic certifications is very difficult. Computational infeasibility can be worked around simply by having one person in the system walk off with a legal certificate. Look at how the Mongolians eventually got through the Great Wall of China. If I recall the stories correctly, they simply bribed some guards. Reducing the system leakage to zero is not practical (nor is it beneficial, given that there are countless 'business people' working in marketing and finance who develop their own scripts to automate their work).
Also, software development is valuable and available world-wide. The ability to go overseas to get work done is completely possible in the software engineering world. If only one country or region places the restriction you propose (I guarantee developing countries will ignore your restriction), then those countries are at a competitive disadvantage. Their next generation will ALSO be at a competitive disadvantage, because they will not develop the appropriate skills. Some of the best programmers do NOT come from formal education in computer science.
The problem we actually have is the lack of incentive to fix the problem.
The user who's machine is infected has no large incentive to help the problem.... and the ISP just ignores the issue. So we need there to be penalties to having an infected machine. The ISPs can then sell a form of monitoring (effectively insurance, a wildly profitable business) to users who do not want to or have the skills to do their own monitoring. I recognize the challenge of dealing with international sites remains.
The companies have no incentive to change, either. The pressures that exist to release software combined with the lack of any material negative effect on software vendors for producing bad software c
Like most questions, the appropriate answer is "it depends". Take an example: I just spent yesterday rewriting a single class to fit into a standardized library. After 20 minutes of coding, 1 hour of documenting, and 2 hours of writing tests, I actually have something that meets the library standards. Could I have used the original class? Sure. But it had problems and inconsistencies. The main problem is that most open source code goes through the coding, but never gets the documenting and aggressive testing, because it's too much overhead.
The undocumented bugs, or system assumptions, will lead to using code and then countless hours debugging problems you didn't expect.
This is so true. This even happens in the hardware world. A T1 connection seems like it's pretty simple. By modern networking standards, it's really slow. However, finding a T1/E1 LIU (Link Interface Unit) that actually works is surprisingly hard. An engineer familiar with the specification can break the vast majority of implementations in less than 5 minutes. I actually know of only one that works (not built by my company, I might add).
There is probably a point at which the system complexity of the resued code becomes great enough that the re-use is valuable. But how big, and how mature the reusable codebase, affects this decision.
For big problems, the 'reusable code' simply becomes a framework that is built upon. This could be anything from subversion to packages like Joomla. Reuse of such large items certainly makes sense.
On a smaller scale, maturity is important, but a lot of the issue centers around the available documentation, test code, AND documentation of the test code (1500 lines of JUnit tests don't do that much good if you can't tell what each test is actually doing). There are very FEW libraries that are actually well written, well documented, and well tested. That's why so much code gets rewritten.
Well, you're half right. The chassis is 2.5" or 3.5"... the platters are not. SCSI drives generally use smaller platters than SATA drives. Seagate's Cheetah X15 15,000 RPM drive is a 2.5" platter in a 3.5" chassis.
You don't see a reason to switch, because the benefits of SAS are in reliability, not in speed. The mechanism inside an enterprise drive is different than that in a consumer drive, and you can see that in the reliability specs and the warranty periods. Given that most consumer data really isn't mission critical (as much as people claim it is), RAID 1 SATA drives are sufficient.
Seagate Research presented a good technical article on SCSI vs. SATA back in 2003. Much of this is still relevant today (though it's SAS vs. SATA)
I wonder if IBM's fab plants can cash the check their PR department writes
These are the engineers, including at least one IBM Fellow (the second author)... this is not the PR department. I expect these folks would not take their reputations in the engineering community lightly.
"Burnout" is another one. The employee is totally responsible for this as the employer will extract as much productivity as their morals allow with no consideration for "burn out."
Sorry for the rant, but these HR platitudes are a pet peeve of mine.
I work with them, and some of them are friends... HR people believe in these and try to act on them. They honestly care, and suffer the same burnout effects as others when they can't make progress. I've seen it: Been there, dated that.
The problem is that the plethora of MBAs running around have (as yet) failed to find a way to measure the effects. If it can't be measured, finance feels it doesn't exist. Therefore, it is ignored. You will shortly see Yahoo! follow down the squeezing path as happens with many other companies as growth slows and power transitions to finance.
If you solve the measurement problem, the education, burnout, and morale issues will solve themselves as the businesses act on what is in their best interest. It is not only belevolence, but also the vision to see that not everything of value can be measeured that will lead companies to act on these issues.
The first class should involve NO programming AT ALL. We teach children to read at an early age, but to write at a much later age... so why do we start programming with writing and never teach reading?
In that way, students learn the consequences of bad writing and also learn how to interpret code rather than writing from scratch. Then you introduce the other topics (testing and version control, etc.) as a later topic when students will have the context of WHY it's important.
So have a per-pound maximum and require that people prove they produced less carbon (or insert pollutant here) in order to get a lower tariff. This provides a massive business incentive to source-trace all goods, which can only help to increase the security of international trade by ship (something that's horrible right now) while at the same time directly incenting the behavior that is appropriate. It also addresses the free trade issues you speak of, since the per-pound maximum could be set based on the worst performing factory/country we can find... thus everyone will be incented to source trace goods.
Domestically, you don't want to try to account for the carbon status of every home. A nonrenewable energy tax does a similar job in many ways, so I'd start with that. It's already metered at the power station or at the pump, so that's an advantage.
Rescind the corporate income tax and only tax pollutants. Tax at product sale, as a form of VAT on products. This avoids taxing anything specifically based on a home or business... it implicitly puts costs into products and power bills (because natural gas or coal sold to the plant will trigger the tax - some loophole avoidance on integrated companies would have to be developed, agriculture and mining also get tricky to keep in balance [e.g. do you account for methane produced by cows?]). Enforce like crazy.
As an interesting byproduct, it may cause an influx of clean (generally intellectual) industry into the USA, because the only tax would be on what they consume (paper, energy), which would be lower than today's corporate tax rates. Won't hurt domestic producers of goods because tariffs keep costs in balance (and may actually improve the stance of domestic manufacturers). May risk a massive recession in the USA if the rest of the developed world ignores our system and continues to use lower priced (polluting) products.
Slashdot Mirror
iTunes Plus is not DRMed. That is all I use.
If you don't like it, so what? You aren't in their target market.
You see, you are presuming that everyone want to take the limited music with them and/or that one cares whether the music works after 30 days. I don't. Let me explain why:
I'm not interested in renting music I already know about. I want to rent music I don't know about, so I can decide if I want to buy it.
While the cost aspects (due to the ads) aren't a perfect analogy, think of this like test driving a car. I want to drive the car for a short period of time on reasonable terms, not only experience it under 25 MPH in some dealer lot. DRM gives me the ability to legally 'test drive' the music. I want to sample music - meaning the whole song (or close to it), not some maybe-but-perhaps-not-really-representative 30 second sound-byte that Apple provides. I already use AmieStreet.com (since the samples are much longer), and I'm open to other alternatives (yes, I know about Napster and Rhapsody, and no, I'm not shelling out $10 a month)
Once I sample a song and decide I like it, I will go acquire the music elsewhere - either on a physical CD (if I like enough songs on an album) or though another source (iTunes, etc.). That will not possess DRM, since I have never paid for (and don't intend to pay for) DRMed music. [That's like buying the car you test drove, for those following the analogy]
The purchased song will get placed on my iPod so that I can take it with me. I'm happy, I'm only transporting music I like, and their business model works in the process, because I can use them to explore. So I'm sorry, but I'm failing to see why their model isn't a good one.
The problem I've experienced in IT is the problem of information asymmetry, exactly the problem in The Market for Lemons. I know what I'm worth as part of an IT position, but employers are generally hiring and paying based on the assumption that (or the need for) a lemon... because that's how the economic "game" plays out. If you have become an "expert mechanic" in hiring IT people, then I have great respect for you.
I would note the asymmetry runs the other way as well. For example, I got really sick of trying to find a good IT employer. Repeated interviews get old, burn vacation, and it's time and energy I could spend elsewhere. I haven't found a reliable list of "good" IT employers so I can constrain the interview list enough to make the process worthwhile.
Hence, I don't play the game. I get better pay, similar hours, and more visibility in a sales role. It has its own pains and challenges, and I certainly wouldn't mind going back to the IT world, but I won't do it at the rate the IT has demonstrated it will pay (and with the treatment usually given to the IT team)
Not True. If copyright is turned off, then it operates like the public domain. Someone can modify GPL code and ship a binary that includes the modified code without providing you the original. That is not the same as what the GPL today provides.
So what?
Specifically, piracy is caused by artificially fixing prices too high. People refuse to buy the good since it is too expensive, but still demand the good, so they steal/copy it in order to obtain it.
Yea, I wouldn't use "artificially", but the rest is accurate.
The only way to discourage piracy is to lower your price to the point that people would rather buy "the real deal" than a cheap knockoff.
Which is a perception problem, rather than a real problem. There is *NO* economic principle stating that profit maximization occurs at the point of supply/demand balance. For example, the company I work for regularly is running at 70-80% capacity, but that maximizes profit (we'd have to lower prices so far to get to 100% capacity that we would not be profitable). Companies maximize profit, not volume.
By extension, the fact that piracy exists is not always "bad" from a profit perspective. (I'll leave all the ethics aside). The bonus that companies get in this case is that it *looks* bad, because our base understanding is one where the marginal cost of production is measurable. Combined with a very clever spin implying copyright infringement is "theft" ... and they can get benefits from government, the media, etc. The challenge for consumers, government, and the media is to separate the real problems from the perception problems, a skill many involved have demonstrated they do not possess.
While I understand that people love black and white/good and evil stories, this isn't that simple.
CDMA is often deployed in the United States because the technology has been developed for larger cell sizes than the GSM/GPRS/EDGE systems deployed in Europe. This is highly beneficial in areas where population density is low (think suburbs). Deploying GSM across the United States would be significantly more expensive than deploying CDMA.
GSM systems using SIM cards were highly advantageous in allowing users to keep a single (expensive) phone and to purchase multiple SIM cards in different countries if they were moving around Europe. The political boundaries and separate companies operating the networks almost demanded the GSM design. The lack of a contiguous network (back when GSM was developed - universal Europe roaming is now relatively common) drove the separation of the phone from the connection identifier (part of the SIM card). This situation doesn't exist in the United States, because the FCC auctions off frequencies in extremely large geographic blocks, and the wireless providers were very quick to provide nationwide coverage (even if it did have large roaming fees 5+ years ago)
There are also other subtleties. CDMA is a US-developed technology, while GSM/GPRS/EDGE was developed in Europe. If you don't think that makes a difference to other countries deploying the systems, then you're wrong. These volume differences at the manufacturing level then impact price of the basestation systems... and the advantages of GSM drove countries with large population densities (think most of Asia) to deploy it. It is areas with larger rural populations (Brazil and parts of India, where CDMA is successful)
The net effect of using CDMA makes it much more difficult to separate the phone from the network. The system wasn't designed for it. Yes, there are identifiers in the phone that would allow it, but having separate SIM devices (the GSM model) is much more flexible and much of the basis for the difference in corporate behavior on the network (it's easy to not activate a phone due to a certain policy, but very hard not to allow use of a device where the only authentication is from a SIM card, so the service provider doesn't know what the hardware is)
RSA is based on a computationally difficult calculation (factoring large numbers). The difference is that there is a secret key and a public key (same with SSL/TLS). Reconstructing the secret key from the public key is computationally difficult (NP-complete).
AACS is a form of a symmetric key system. There is some complicated math in calculating the derivative keys and allowing key revocation (the AACS encryption method is available on the net), but fundamentallly, they have a problem: The key to decode the disk must be present on the disc. Because this is a symmetric system (again, requiring some calculation from the master key in a hardware device doesn't complicate it that much), it simply cannot be made to be as secure as a system with a secret key. "Hacking" AACS doesn't actually require re-derivation from the master key, since there are so many opportunities to intercept the derived keys when they are "in flight" (in software decoders, for example)
Not true. Read ARMCO INC. v. HARDESTY, 467 U.S. 638 (1984); specifically: "Under the Commerce Clause, a State may not tax a transaction or incident more heavily when it crosses state lines than when it occurs entirely within the State." (emphasis added).
Thus, use taxes CAN be charged on items shipped across state lines. For a specific example, feel free to download Vermont's state tax booklet and read the instructions for line 27 (on page 7 of the PDF).
To save Vermont some bandwidth, let me quote the relevant section: "Use Tax applies to purchases on which sales tax has not been charged, but are subject to sales tax. This includes purchases from a mail-order house or catalog, over the Internet, from an out-of-state retailer, or from any retailer who did not charge sales tax."
This is perfectly legal, even under the existing laws, because the Vermont use tax is grandfathered - it existed long before the US government prevented sales tax on Internet purchases.
That is a narrow and neoeconomic point of view. Since we're to quoting Wikipedia as an authorative source, I encourage you to read the definition of Economic Value on Wikipedia. Specifically, the second and third paragraphs under "The various explanations"
In neoclassical economics, where value is measured relative to supply, you may be correct. However, there are other definitions of value (which is part of why this thread branch has gone around in circles)
However, if you go back to classical economics and then to Marx, you will find the concepts of use-value and exchange value. Software would generally have a non-zero use-value (because using it creates economic efficiency and therefore produces benefits to the user) and an exchange value (the cost in money) that should approach zero (to your point about marginal cost of production).
However, we find that isn't true (go look at the cost of Microsoft Office). This is true due to the cost of performing a transition to a new software program (file compatibiltiy, training, etc.). Due to these costs, Microsoft (and others) can value price their product. As long as the (classical economic) value provided by their product is greater than that of an open source/free solution, companies will continue to purchase Office.
On the other hand, I agree that we need a new model. Classical economics handles software just fine; it's just that neoclassical economics (heavily dependent upon scarcity) doesn't handle software well. It's not that classical economics doesn't have its own problems... so I agree there is a place for a new model.
If you actually understood the concept of value, you would realize that you just proved the point of those naysayers. If there is a psychological benefit, then value was created. As I pointed out in my other post, Value = Benefit - Cost - Risk. The lack of cost does not indicate there was no value created.
There is _no_ exchange of value
Wrong. You now receive the benefits of not having to rewrite the functions contained within libpng. You are avoiding development expense, which has value (although it's cost avoidance and not direct value creation).
Oh my. Back to Marketing 101.
Value = Benefit - Cost or if you prefer: Value = Benefit - Cost - Risk (if you don't consider risk a cost)
Free (as in speech and beer) only speaks to the Cost portion of the value equation.
If the software provides benefit, such as a reduced time to perform a specific task, then it still has value, even if it is zero cost.
Not to mention, the open source aspect CERTAINLY has both positive aspects to risk (you are not dependent on the survival of a single supplier) and negative aspects to risk (witness Microsoft's threats about patents).
Logical Fallacy #1: Straw Man. You are substituting a different definition, without knowing the real position
What does a desire for free software really mean then? From a developer's standpoint, one implication is that a software developer's services have little value. Or perhaps it means the specific software under discussion has little value.
Logical Fallacy #2: False Dilemma. Because you start to draw conclusions immediately after these two statements, you give this as an either-or proposition, when both of your suggestions may be false. It is possible that free software is software where the freedom to customize the software trumps all other possibilties. It is also possible that the increased value produced by the free software greatly exceeds the development expense for the software. This may lead to an economic situation where an organization doesn't need to recover the development expense, and the network effect can be used to have others help to defer the expense.
Clearly software has value, particularly in new areas.
Just because a word processor has existed for a while does not mean it doesn't deliver value. It may be commoditized in its *price* and therefore be capable of delivering value at a low *cost*, but you are misinterpreting the concept of value.
So what exactly does he mean? We're in the software development business which requires defining things a bit more precisely kinda like in mathematics or law.
But humorously, you're debating economics, which is a heck of a lot less defined than mathematics or law.
The individual provider of software development services is saying I am a software developer and I am giving away value for free.
Logical Fallacy #3: False Equality Value = benefit - cost - risk. You are equating the lack of cost (a developer giving away their services) with giving away value for free. Without considering the other parts of the value equation (such as personal benefits received from the development, like when a developer "scratches their own itch"), you are not creating a well-formed association between value and cost.
But how can that mode of working produce this top system on par with systems in which the developers are giving their all day in and day out?
Logical Fallacy #4: Confusing Cause and Effect, Appeal to Consequences of a Common Belief, Appeal to a common practice. Generally, you have submitted no evidence that free systems cannot produce results that are on par or better than their commercial counterparts. While the software that surrounds Linux can be challenging at times, the core operating system is widely used in embedded and server environments, thus providing a counter-example to your claim.
[Standards]
Logical Fallacy #5: Red Herring. Development of standards - even ad-hoc ones - is different than software development. While it may impact the total value of free software, it does not undermine the basic economics that lead to free software.
We can go on and on with this kind of analysis
Please don't...
Logical Fallacy #5: False Dilemma. At least you have three choices this time... but the point still stands that the issue is far more complicated than you make it out to be, and value can be achieved in ways that are not considered in your analysis.
Good writing mixes long and short sentences, because writing entirely composed of long sentences can be hard to read. I actually think the point you are trying to make is similar to what others are also highlighting. AKAImBatman makes the point about emphasis, which can be established in text by altering the meter of the sentences. The new format destroys this information. By using color changes and formatting to increase reading speed, the emphasis may be changed from communicating information to communicating data.
===
The paragraph I wrote above is crafted to bring attention to the short sentence: "The new format destroys this information". In fact, that's all I really want people to remember - the rest is for context. Certainly, the message isn't as strong as it could be (I'm writing this in a matter of minutes, not revising over the course of hours), but the meter creates the emphasis. Given the use of color and formatting to convert longer phrases into short blocks (thus eliminating meter), I am curious how well that summary message would be transferred if my paragraph were reformatted in the "Live Ink" layout.
No need for imagination. Go read Sega v. Accolade.
it's GPL code man.. you're free to do whatever you want with it
NO. You are Free to do whatever the license grants you the right to do. From GPL Section 2(b): "You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License." (emphasis added)
You are proposing to directly leverage GPL code to develop new code. That new code and the combined code are a derivative work of the GPL code.
Thus, to directly answer your question: Yes, there is something wrong with what you are proposing. No lawyer would want you to do it, because the work you produce in steps 2 and 3 is a derivative work of GPL code, and thus must be licensed under the GPL to avoid copyright infringement.
I'm sure there are many large companies - ones that would love to protect the status quo - that would greatly support your proposal.
I think what you propose is crazy.
You have failed to follow through the implementation and resulting consequences of this action.
The problem isn't only general purpose computers, it is general purpose processors running general purpose operating systems. Making it 'embedded' doesn't necessarily solve the problem. For example, there have been vulnerabilities in various routers over the past few years, and your action would not solve those issues. You provide no evidence that preventing user installation will protect the system in any fashion. The system would still have underlying x86, PPC, ARM or MIPS processor which could run arbitrary code.
First, how do you allow people to get a system where they can write software? It is both systematically difficult, and is a practical impossibility with current systems. Given that many products have some form of scripting built in (including Microsoft Office, and about every version of *nix there is), it is difficult to prevent someone who is even marginally capable from writing software. For example, when I was a university student, there were strict policies that prevented the compilation of software on the community Unix system (Sun servers at the time). However, given that sh, csh, and tcsh were all available on the system, I could perform just about any action I wanted on that system, as far as software is concerned. That's not to say it wasn't slow compared to a compiled program (it WAS), but it was almost impossible for them to detect or prevent.
One potential (and partial) solution to this is so-called the 'trusted computing' model, which would only allow 'certified' software to run on a computer. I posit without proof that the challenge of preventing ANY method of forging electronic certifications is very difficult. Computational infeasibility can be worked around simply by having one person in the system walk off with a legal certificate. Look at how the Mongolians eventually got through the Great Wall of China. If I recall the stories correctly, they simply bribed some guards. Reducing the system leakage to zero is not practical (nor is it beneficial, given that there are countless 'business people' working in marketing and finance who develop their own scripts to automate their work).
Also, software development is valuable and available world-wide. The ability to go overseas to get work done is completely possible in the software engineering world. If only one country or region places the restriction you propose (I guarantee developing countries will ignore your restriction), then those countries are at a competitive disadvantage. Their next generation will ALSO be at a competitive disadvantage, because they will not develop the appropriate skills. Some of the best programmers do NOT come from formal education in computer science.
The problem we actually have is the lack of incentive to fix the problem.
The user who's machine is infected has no large incentive to help the problem. ... and the ISP just ignores the issue. So we need there to be penalties to having an infected machine. The ISPs can then sell a form of monitoring (effectively insurance, a wildly profitable business) to users who do not want to or have the skills to do their own monitoring. I recognize the challenge of dealing with international sites remains.
The companies have no incentive to change, either. The pressures that exist to release software combined with the lack of any material negative effect on software vendors for producing bad software c
Like most questions, the appropriate answer is "it depends". Take an example: I just spent yesterday rewriting a single class to fit into a standardized library. After 20 minutes of coding, 1 hour of documenting, and 2 hours of writing tests, I actually have something that meets the library standards. Could I have used the original class? Sure. But it had problems and inconsistencies. The main problem is that most open source code goes through the coding, but never gets the documenting and aggressive testing, because it's too much overhead.
The undocumented bugs, or system assumptions, will lead to using code and then countless hours debugging problems you didn't expect.
This is so true. This even happens in the hardware world. A T1 connection seems like it's pretty simple. By modern networking standards, it's really slow. However, finding a T1/E1 LIU (Link Interface Unit) that actually works is surprisingly hard. An engineer familiar with the specification can break the vast majority of implementations in less than 5 minutes. I actually know of only one that works (not built by my company, I might add).
There is probably a point at which the system complexity of the resued code becomes great enough that the re-use is valuable. But how big, and how mature the reusable codebase, affects this decision.
For big problems, the 'reusable code' simply becomes a framework that is built upon. This could be anything from subversion to packages like Joomla. Reuse of such large items certainly makes sense.
On a smaller scale, maturity is important, but a lot of the issue centers around the available documentation, test code, AND documentation of the test code (1500 lines of JUnit tests don't do that much good if you can't tell what each test is actually doing). There are very FEW libraries that are actually well written, well documented, and well tested. That's why so much code gets rewritten.
Forgot to say the first 15K drive was 2000... an article with the dates and speeds.
Well, you're half right. The chassis is 2.5" or 3.5"... the platters are not. SCSI drives generally use smaller platters than SATA drives. Seagate's Cheetah X15 15,000 RPM drive is a 2.5" platter in a 3.5" chassis.
Because SCSI and SAS are not about density. See the Seagate Research paper in my other post.
Seagate Research presented a good technical article on SCSI vs. SATA back in 2003. Much of this is still relevant today (though it's SAS vs. SATA)
These are the engineers, including at least one IBM Fellow (the second author)... this is not the PR department. I expect these folks would not take their reputations in the engineering community lightly.
Sorry for the rant, but these HR platitudes are a pet peeve of mine.
I work with them, and some of them are friends... HR people believe in these and try to act on them. They honestly care, and suffer the same burnout effects as others when they can't make progress. I've seen it: Been there, dated that.
The problem is that the plethora of MBAs running around have (as yet) failed to find a way to measure the effects. If it can't be measured, finance feels it doesn't exist. Therefore, it is ignored. You will shortly see Yahoo! follow down the squeezing path as happens with many other companies as growth slows and power transitions to finance.
If you solve the measurement problem, the education, burnout, and morale issues will solve themselves as the businesses act on what is in their best interest. It is not only belevolence, but also the vision to see that not everything of value can be measeured that will lead companies to act on these issues.
In that way, students learn the consequences of bad writing and also learn how to interpret code rather than writing from scratch. Then you introduce the other topics (testing and version control, etc.) as a later topic when students will have the context of WHY it's important.
So have a per-pound maximum and require that people prove they produced less carbon (or insert pollutant here) in order to get a lower tariff. This provides a massive business incentive to source-trace all goods, which can only help to increase the security of international trade by ship (something that's horrible right now) while at the same time directly incenting the behavior that is appropriate. It also addresses the free trade issues you speak of, since the per-pound maximum could be set based on the worst performing factory/country we can find... thus everyone will be incented to source trace goods.
Domestically, you don't want to try to account for the carbon status of every home. A nonrenewable energy tax does a similar job in many ways, so I'd start with that. It's already metered at the power station or at the pump, so that's an advantage.
Rescind the corporate income tax and only tax pollutants. Tax at product sale, as a form of VAT on products. This avoids taxing anything specifically based on a home or business ... it implicitly puts costs into products and power bills (because natural gas or coal sold to the plant will trigger the tax - some loophole avoidance on integrated companies would have to be developed, agriculture and mining also get tricky to keep in balance [e.g. do you account for methane produced by cows?]). Enforce like crazy.
As an interesting byproduct, it may cause an influx of clean (generally intellectual) industry into the USA, because the only tax would be on what they consume (paper, energy), which would be lower than today's corporate tax rates. Won't hurt domestic producers of goods because tariffs keep costs in balance (and may actually improve the stance of domestic manufacturers). May risk a massive recession in the USA if the rest of the developed world ignores our system and continues to use lower priced (polluting) products.