Well, it IS entirely possible that these "counterfeit" things came from the exact same production line made by the exact same people that make the Cisco gear. Only they didn't sell it to Cisco, which then would have slapped their sticker on and sold it for three times the price, but just conterfeitet the sticker and sold it for double.
Well, over 90% of "capitalism" these days seem to be playing with "what if" scenarios at the stock markets, not doing actual real things like products.
Which is basically why I think the current capitalism will fail sooner or later the same way that communism failed. We need to get back to a *realistic* market model, based on reality. Where capital, workforce and consumer have about the same level of power on the market.
To quote from Takahata's "My Neighbors the Yamadas":
Mother and Father doing the month's budget.
Mother: We have to have 300 for the tutor for Noboru. (13 year old son) Father: What??? Give me 200, and I tutor him myself! Grandmonter: I'll to it for 150! Noboru: Just give me 100, then I promise to study harder.
And the Developer has to weigh which client needs which features. If a feature is needed by 2000 clients and another feature only by 5 clients, then it makes sense to prioritize the feature needed by the 2000 clients.
Also, if one client just demands "gimme feature", and it would take 100 hours to implement, and another client says "I would like a feature, and I have prepared this pach here that works with the current development tree, and am willing to check each new version if it breaks anything" then the choice is also easy.
Be sure to submit that story then. Perhaps Hollywood will make a movie.
I can imagine it: DamnStupidElf, played by Tom Hanks with a long beard, jumping around a fire "Aha. Look what I've created. I have made Xorg PATCH!!!";-P
Of course, there is always the Benz example, that it simply might take a while and a specific example to make a product successful :
He finished built his first "production" car, the "Benz Patent Motorwagen" in January 1886, after over fifteen years of development. He build three of them, and sold none.
It wasn't until two years later, when his wife Bertha took one of them without telling him and went for a 120 mile round-trip to visit her mother that people actually realized "Hey, this funny thing seems to actually work" and started buying like crazy.
The same could be true today. Some thing like a tablet on the marked for month, no large sales, then suddenly some other guy that tinkers with it creates the killer use case. (Of course it can't really happen, since things are too locked down to actually thinker with them)
Most of the "Failure" in history also provided valuable hints and ideas to the things that then became the big success.
So back then you had perhaps 90% failures and 10% successes.
These days, once there is even a hint of one of the 10% successes happening, it will immediately be sued into oblivion by the 90% failures, so that less and less successes actually make it.
Of course they not really "own" the game they have a "copyright" on it. "copyright" that was intended to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", so that IN THE END the product that is created winds up in the thing we call "culture".
If all the Grimms fairy tails had still be copyrighted, and the Grimms descendants hat wanted Disney to pay exorbitant licensing fees, what movies would Disney have made?
Nowadays most stuff that gets created just vanishes into never-to-be-seen-again copyright black holes. AT LEAST "copyright" should be coupled with a "copy obligation", that everybody requesting a single copy should be able to get a single copy at the last suggested retail price from the copyright holder, or you lose the copyright.
That reminds me of my German build washing machine, still working at 30 years old.
I always *think* about buying a new one, since the program settings have become a little erratic any you have to turn the dial very carefully, but the company that made it has since moved all manufacturing to china, and from what I hear they only last a few years now.
What's easier, getting a customer to click through dozen of sub-windows in the network configuration while troubleshooting, or print and fax you a single screen-shot of "ipconfig/a" from the CLI ?
My Reason I want it on my computer: The second I know how to do it in the terminal, I know how to automate it.
The Reason I would want it on my mothers computer: Instead of going through miles and miles of "click this, read that, click there, check that, click this, read me back what the message says" back and forth while troubleshooting I can just send a mail with "copy/paste this in the terminal, and send me back the result".
Also the GUI and the Terminal are two different tools. Like a hammer and a saw. Each has its specific advantages and disadvantages. You of course there seem to be people who *really* hate saws, and will never touch them, and go throw hissy fits when they see one. They only use the hammer all the time, even to cut boards.
Of course a company can maximise *short term* profits by moving stuff to countries with cheaper labour. Of course, every time they lay of employees they also lay of customers, so in the *long term* there will be no one able to afford their products any more. Because the "we have to find cheaper labour" on the production side leads to an "we have to find cheaper products" on the consumer side.
After all, the same way the company doesn't want to pay high labour cost in the US, the customers sure as hell don't want to pay for high CEO and "shareholder revenue" cost in the US, and will move to buy more stuff completely made in China, without those additional expenses.
The Cat: [to Rimmer] What *is* it? Rimmer: It's a rent in the space-time continuum. The Cat: [to Lister] What *is* it? Lister: The stasis room freezes time, you know, makes time stand still. So whenever you have a leak, it must preserve whatever it's leaked into, and it's leaked into this room. The Cat: [to Rimmer] What *is* it? Rimmer: It's singularity, a point in the Universe where the normal laws of space and time don't apply. The Cat: [to Lister] What *is* it? Lister: It's a hole back into the past. The Cat: Oh, a magic door! Well, why didn't you say?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, 2MB is 32 times the memory the C64 needed to do A LOT of "fancy" stuff, including it's own viruses.
The "light gun" made me curious.
That's some cool tech, even if the plug is almost as big as the the gun. ;-)
Not long down the road, all those Filipino maids in the rich palazzos, palaces, and chateaus will be replaced with American maids.
Don't worry. The American fast food industry is working hard to prevent just that.
Well, it IS entirely possible that these "counterfeit" things came from the exact same production line made by the exact same people that make the Cisco gear. Only they didn't sell it to Cisco, which then would have slapped their sticker on and sold it for three times the price, but just conterfeitet the sticker and sold it for double.
.... they can convert their hangars into an tropical amusement park, like CargoLifter did.
Well, over 90% of "capitalism" these days seem to be playing with "what if" scenarios at the stock markets, not doing actual real things like products.
Which is basically why I think the current capitalism will fail sooner or later the same way that communism failed. We need to get back to a *realistic* market model, based on reality. Where capital, workforce and consumer have about the same level of power on the market.
Almost as cool as Sheep Pong. (About in the middle of the video)
Well, if all the people in the Netherlands would moved out of the flood zones, the country would probably cease to exist.
To quote from Takahata's "My Neighbors the Yamadas":
Mother and Father doing the month's budget.
Mother: We have to have 300 for the tutor for Noboru. (13 year old son)
Father: What??? Give me 200, and I tutor him myself!
Grandmonter: I'll to it for 150!
Noboru: Just give me 100, then I promise to study harder.
And the Developer has to weigh which client needs which features. If a feature is needed by 2000 clients and another feature only by 5 clients, then it makes sense to prioritize the feature needed by the 2000 clients.
Also, if one client just demands "gimme feature", and it would take 100 hours to implement, and another client says "I would like a feature, and I have prepared this pach here that works with the current development tree, and am willing to check each new version if it breaks anything" then the choice is also easy.
Be sure to submit that story then. Perhaps Hollywood will make a movie.
I can imagine it: DamnStupidElf, played by Tom Hanks with a long beard, jumping around a fire "Aha. Look what I've created. I have made Xorg PATCH!!!" ;-P
Of course, there is always the Benz example, that it simply might take a while and a specific example to make a product successful :
He finished built his first "production" car, the "Benz Patent Motorwagen" in January 1886, after over fifteen years of development. He build three of them, and sold none.
It wasn't until two years later, when his wife Bertha took one of them without telling him and went for a 120 mile round-trip to visit her mother that people actually realized "Hey, this funny thing seems to actually work" and started buying like crazy.
The same could be true today. Some thing like a tablet on the marked for month, no large sales, then suddenly some other guy that tinkers with it creates the killer use case. (Of course it can't really happen, since things are too locked down to actually thinker with them)
Most of the "Failure" in history also provided valuable hints and ideas to the things that then became the big success.
So back then you had perhaps 90% failures and 10% successes.
These days, once there is even a hint of one of the 10% successes happening, it will immediately be sued into oblivion by the 90% failures, so that less and less successes actually make it.
Of course they not really "own" the game they have a "copyright" on it. "copyright" that was intended to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", so that IN THE END the product that is created winds up in the thing we call "culture".
If all the Grimms fairy tails had still be copyrighted, and the Grimms descendants hat wanted Disney to pay exorbitant licensing fees, what movies would Disney have made?
Nowadays most stuff that gets created just vanishes into never-to-be-seen-again copyright black holes. AT LEAST "copyright" should be coupled with a "copy obligation", that everybody requesting a single copy should be able to get a single copy at the last suggested retail price from the copyright holder, or you lose the copyright.
Or, the other way around, he was selling those crystals three times the realistic production costs?
And had to move the manufacturing to china to KEEP selling them three times the production costs?
Well, it won't take long till some Chinese manufacturer, that doesn't have to pay big CEO bonuses and shareholder revenues will undercut him.
That reminds me of my German build washing machine, still working at 30 years old.
I always *think* about buying a new one, since the program settings have become a little erratic any you have to turn the dial very carefully, but the company that made it has since moved all manufacturing to china, and from what I hear they only last a few years now.
Mobile Telephony? Humbug. People will trip over the wires an break their legs!
That already happened in a lot of companies.
True, most of them just boot and then launch a Terminal server session on a Windows Terminal server, but hey, it's a start. ;-P
Oh, and a "Windows" CLI example:
What's easier, getting a customer to click through dozen of sub-windows in the network configuration while troubleshooting, or print and fax you a single screen-shot of "ipconfig /a" from the CLI ?
My Reason I want it on my computer: The second I know how to do it in the terminal, I know how to automate it.
The Reason I would want it on my mothers computer: Instead of going through miles and miles of "click this, read that, click there, check that, click this, read me back what the message says" back and forth while troubleshooting I can just send a mail with "copy/paste this in the terminal, and send me back the result".
Also the GUI and the Terminal are two different tools. Like a hammer and a saw. Each has its specific advantages and disadvantages.
You of course there seem to be people who *really* hate saws, and will never touch them, and go throw hissy fits when they see one.
They only use the hammer all the time, even to cut boards.
Of course a company can maximise *short term* profits by moving stuff to countries with cheaper labour. Of course, every time they lay of employees they also lay of customers, so in the *long term* there will be no one able to afford their products any more. Because the "we have to find cheaper labour" on the production side leads to an "we have to find cheaper products" on the consumer side.
After all, the same way the company doesn't want to pay high labour cost in the US, the customers sure as hell don't want to pay for high CEO and "shareholder revenue" cost in the US, and will move to buy more stuff completely made in China, without those additional expenses.
There will probably be iDuctTape available.
The Cat: [to Rimmer] What *is* it?
Rimmer: It's a rent in the space-time continuum.
The Cat: [to Lister] What *is* it?
Lister: The stasis room freezes time, you know, makes time stand still. So whenever you have a leak, it must preserve whatever it's leaked into, and it's leaked into this room.
The Cat: [to Rimmer] What *is* it?
Rimmer: It's singularity, a point in the Universe where the normal laws of space and time don't apply.
The Cat: [to Lister] What *is* it?
Lister: It's a hole back into the past.
The Cat: Oh, a magic door! Well, why didn't you say?
So because Web 2.0 has blown all it's buzzword potential they decided to give Usenet 2.0 a shot?
Yes. Those are all things that should sensibly happen *during* boot, *before login*, not afterwards.