Back when Galileo started talking about the rest of the universe perhaps not circling around the Earth, Christianity worked very quickly to stifle him and keep him under house arrest until he died.
Christianity was used to stifle him by people in power. If I use a hammer to oppress people, does that mean the hammer did the oppressing?
I can blame the hammer if it can think for itself... otherwise I'm blaming the hammerer.
So what I'm saying is that either OP meant that the brass in the "christian" organisation were actually doing the stifling, or they allowed others to manipulate them.
So if the hammer has no capability to act on it's own, then the OP reads to mean that the hammerer is responsible, and if the hammer has the capability to act, then OP reads to mean that the hammer is in fact responsible for it's actions.
I agree this might be stretching it a bit but it's the only reason I can think of that after thousands of cases over several years none has ever gone to court and the ones that contest always settle in the end.
I think the reason is just plain old math - which one's cheaper? Option-A: Spend $10k or more on lawyers plus month(s) years(s)? of your life in court, plus the possibility of still losing and paying a Very Large Fine. Best case: Out $10k plus lost life-time + added stress. Option-B: Fork over $3k now, and get it over with. No chance of further expenses, no stress, no loss of lifetime.
It's the same reason that many companies used to settle small (sub-$million) claims w/o going to court: on the surface it's cheaper to settle then to fight, even if you win... of course that just sets you up for repeated extortion, so most will fight them now...
In my IANAL opinion the legal system is broken. It's way too expensive for ordinary people to engage in legal action: only corporations and the rich can regularly engage in asserting their rights or viewpoints on others.
Legal fees seem to be a pretty sizable chunk of settlements in general... and legal fees seem to be a growing chunk of doing business in general. Who do you think really pays for that?
In my IANAL opinion, when indirect costs of doing something are a significant percent of the cost of doing said action (in some cases the single largest part) you need to at least consider that the system is broken... legal fees are by definition indirect, since the everyday actions of normal businesses and people has nothing to do with lawyers... and yet this cost is very high; conclusion? the system might be very broken.
I would agree with the GP: When an ordinary person is no longer able to understand or argue the law, it has become too complex, and is no longer for and of the people. That some lawyers can pollute the law to their own financial advantage is abhorent.
Well.. while everyone is entitled to their opinion and entitled to making their own decisions, I think you are making assumptions that are not valid.
To make the decision based on "supported closed source" or "having to fix bugs myself" is not in the open/closed source equation.
As many others (including my own post) have noted, you can buy support from lots of companies. Red Hat is probably the best known, so you can have open-source supported software. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive, and so should not be a pivot point in the decision.
Nowhere in the deal was your accounting firm forced to have in-house programming talent. The point was only that if you want to have this talent in-house, you can.
Open-source is about choice and freedom. Choice that closed-source doesn't give you, and freedoms from which closed-source restricts you.
...and I don't care what any closed-source vendor promises in the glossy: they will fix any given bug you report on their schedule, not yours. And that schedule may preclude your bug from ever getting fixed. They get away with this by de-supporting products, forcing you to upgrade (at your expense), or even stating that your configuration is at fault. When you get into a pissing contest between two closed-source applications that don't work together, both vendors will say that it's the other guy's fault - as the user, you're stuck in the middle, and there is not a thing you can do about it. While OSS doesn't guarantee that someone else will fix your bug the second you report it, it does mean that if you want it faster you can hire someone to do it. This can be a crucial difference when a mission critical system goes down due to an uncommon bug.
There is nothing (other than a price tag) that closed-source offers that you can not get with open source. There are a lot of options and freedoms that you can elect to exercise with open source that are not options in a closed-source environment.
That the users owe the developers and you can't demand a bug fix is the point. Their's no support, so you can't hold anyone responsible if your decision to use this software creates a problem. So what if it's free instead of a large licensing fee? If a run into a problem 4 months in on my own expensive business venture and my software isn't fixed right away, I'm screwed, and if it's open source, I can't demand it be fixed, and therefor businesses have a lot of trouble being interested in unsuported open source.
Bill? Is that you?
Man, that such FUD is posted here...
If anything the argument only applies to closed-source. Let's do a little comparison. Closed Source:
- You have no way to verify functionality that is promised, other than 'black-box testing'.
- Since you can't see how funcitonality is implemented, you might be left liable for the software if it (for the sake of random fictional example) installs a rootkit on every PC it comes in contact with.
- The vendor makes you waive liabilty in the license, so there's still no one responsible.
- If there is a bug, you must wait until the vendor releases a fix. Without the source you are locked in to waiting until they fix...if they ever do.
- If the vendor de-supports a version you (typically) can't get support from anyone else. This means you are in a forced-upgrade situation where you have to pay for new licenses.
- If the vendor closes shop, you (typically) can't get support from anyone else.
Open Source:
- You have the source code to verify functionality that is promised...and sure, you can also run it.
- You have the source code to verify implementation to ensure that it's not installing a rootkit on every PC.
- While there is still no 'vendor' responsible for the operation of the code... you can deterimine what the code does, and how it does it, and whether or not it will leave you screwed. Let's not blame our parents (or Canada) for all of our problems, and take some freakin' responsibility over our lives.
- If there is a bug, you can wait until the 'vendor' releases a fix... or! With the source you can write (or commission to write) your own fix.
- If the vendor de-supports a version you simply hire someone else to support it. This means no forced-upgrade.
- If the vendor closes shop you simply hire someone else to support it.
So explain to me again why having the source code available is a liability?
The sooner Linux users stop buying closed driver only crap, the sooner we can all stop suffering.
I doubt that 5% of the PC market will have any impact on hardware vendors.
I would argue quite the opposite: We need to write our own drivers where and whenever possible, as this makes more hardware Linux compatible. The larger the compatibility list, the more people will want it on their desktop, the more people using it, the more likely that a hardware mfg decides that writing and supplying drivers is a competative advantage they can use to sell their product.
I think the lack of drivers has two sources:
(1) - 5% market share. As a 'producer' it doesn't make necessarily make sense to spend time capturing such a small percentage of the market - write for Windows and you get in the order of 90% of the market.
(2) - OSS people do the work for you. As a 'producer' having someone else 'pay' for the work means more profit for you.
The closed-source option has neither of these two disadvantages... and in my opinion the only way to overcome them is to play along with #2 until #1 is no longer true...
Sadly, I'm afraid that when a-la-carte channel choices becomes the norm, you will be very dissapointed in the results.
You will (maybe) still have the option to buy all (say 100) channels for (say $50). But don't think that this means you will be buying channels for $0.50 each... probably more like $5-$10+ per channel. So this means that your total choice for the buck gets reduced -- as soon as you buy more than a handful of channels you might as well buy the bundle 'cause you're spending the same amount.
I also think that the end result of a fully true a-la-carte system is going to be less channels and less choice. Maybe that's a good thing - - there's certinaly a lot of crap on TV, but if you think that the History channel is going to outlive Fox's Live Police Chase channel (24hrs a day -- Live Police Chases!! Order Now!! Now!! Now!!) you are sadly mistakened.
I'm not sold in either direction on this one. There's pro's and con's to both models.
If anything I'd be picking 'c - none of the above'. I'm more interested in fully on-demand TV, not a feed. I want to pick what and when I want to watch, and I don't care to subscribe to "channels". In my opinion the days of TV ruling my time should be over - I should control when and where I want to watch what.
Sell hardware, not software - and for a profit.... Follow the lead of dance mats, donkey konga, light guns and sell them for $50 game included... sell a halo controller, or a lightsaber...
I like it.
While companies bitch and moan that their product is being pirated they have so far been a 1-trick pony. They insist on clinging to an outdated business model that simply doesn't work in the new age.
Every other company and business sector had to accomodate the changes that happened around them: The oft-used Buggy-Whip Corporation example - cars arrived making the buggy whip obsolete. I guess in today's age they would have demanded some kind of compensation or royalty be built into every car sold, to keep the poor company going.
Companies need to come up with innovative ideas to survive, and forcing a piece of the physical world into the virtual world might not eliminate piracy, but it will certainly convince a lot of people to just buy the freakin' game.
Without copyright we don't need the GPL.
The purpose of the GPL is to ensure that works created by people are available to people in a public commons. If we remove the notion that someone can withhold works from the public commons, then we don't need to create a public commons. ('cause it'll all be public,...right?)
Whether or not any given company actually writes software isn't really the question, neither is the 'interest level' of companies of various sizes in the past.
The question really is, with the criminal charges and civil suits that are coming out (notably Sony), can companies afford to ignore this?
I'm not suggesting that every company need to have interal software auditing capabilities. However, using only open-source code affords companies some level of assurance that the code has possibly already been peer reviewed, or if they want to, they can hire an independent consulting firm to review it. The point isn't that everyone always needs to review source code; it's whether or not companies in specific situations can afford not to review the code.
The point I was making was more like an insurance question: At some point risks mount, and a company needs to make a decision on the levels of risk they are willing to accept (and yes, ignoring it is a decision, and some will opt for this, much like people who don't buy automobile insurance)
My specific (immediate) concern is the very situation Sony finds itself in now: they are legally responsible for code they didn't write, since they did distribute it. Can they sue frist4'net? sure, but if a Sony employee goes to jail over this (which while not likely is not impossible) suing f4i does not get that individual their personal time back.
The cost is a bit high, in my opinion, and there's really no indication that there will be a good selection of homebrew apps for it.
Depends on how you count cost.
The shop where I work paid many times more for each CPU in our servers than the entire 3-cpu xbox retails for... the admins tell me that it's the same cpu...
I suspect that there will be some good efforts into clustering these things -- they are sold below hardware cost!
...to be you, Diebold.
Ok, now that I have that off my chest... I have been wondering of late whether we are not in fact arriving at a time when more organisations are going to demand not just open standards for document formats, but the actual right to the ability to peer-review code for which they are in some way, shape or form responsible. How can a company be sure that it isn't distributing rootkits on their CDs if they can't look at the code? Think Sony is going to think twice about buying code that it hasn't reviewed?
Since the state is responsible to ensure that voting is fair, transparent and auditable, it makes good sense to make this code open source. I'm not arguing over a specific license - for the purpose of this discussion copyright is not important : only that anyone who wishes to ensure that their consitutional right to vote has been properly administered is able to do so.
This reminds me of the debate over opening the source code on the breathalizers in Florida...
In my opinion, anything that the guv uses should be open source, excepting areas of national security (i.e. where some piece of code gives direct knowledge that shouldn't be handed out... like missle launch code maybe?)
The difference b/w the Sony problem and a (example) Windows problem is that you can't patch a CD. In fact, the best solution is not a patch, it's to remove the offending software.
The how-to-remove was out in a couple of days, and since there is no way to patch existing CDs, the best solution is a massive, loud, wide-spread notification to the public in order to ensure minimum damage.
A patch for the flaw takes longer to create, as it needs to pass some rigorous testing (after all the patch shouldn't break your Windows installation)
...and that's my favorite part: after the long pause while Sony worked on a 'fix', and the hoops you had (have?) to go through to even get the patch --- (wait for it!) --- the patch is flawed! wtf?!? just advise true and full removal and admit the mistake.
Which is all the more reason that I don't think this will go to court anywhere. I doubt Sony truly wants a test of their EULA... I think they know that it's threat (untested) is worth something.
They'll settle out of court so as not to have their EULA quashed.
This way they can hold it over individual consumers who are likely to decide that it's not worth their life's savings, as opposed to wasting it on an organisation with arguably deeper pockets than Sony has.
C'mon... I'm debating whether Hesse's new quote should replace his last one on the subject:
"This e-mail, which we have also reviewed, seems to be about a routine matter," says Hesse. "While it did introduce the notion of a 'rootkit,' it did not suggest that this software was anything but benign."
How anyone in his position could use the words "rootkit" and "benign" in the same sentence and expect to be taken seriously is beyond me.
How about: 'err, this e-mail seems to be about a routine matter. While it did introduce the notion of 'death and dismemberment', it did not suggest that the actions were anything but benign.
I don't think that any competent techie would consider the word "rookit" as something to ignore in an e-mail... and if Sony doesn't have techies reviewing things when mgt doesn't understand what they are, then they deserve everything coming to them.
At this time, I'd like to thank Mr. Hesse for doing a world of favour to the anti-DRM community. Keep up the good work!
And when you think of Infected by DRM, think/thank Hesse...
I know that our ERP won't upgrade to a new version of anything until all the critical components are listed by the vendors as being supported.
I'll admit I haven't read the report, but I'm (personally) left with the impression that a really clever person was hired by MS to design and create a test that linux would either outright fail, or at least appear weak... if the end-goal is to make any product look poor, it's pretty easy to design the test.
Sorry Doc Thompson -- as other people here have stated: The fact that MS paid the bill and came out shining makes the sales pitch a little suspect (always+no-matter-who!)... but the apparent difficulties imposed on the linux side appear to back up these suspicions.
Hi Illiterate Coward.
The request was for 'one example where sales increased as a result of advertising', not for 'companies started out small with large advertising departments'.
RTFPP (that's 'Parent Post' for you jerkass.)
Marketing hasn't been proven to work, please, give me one example where sales increased as a result of advertising, and not advertising budgets being increased due to increased sales.
Off the top of my head:
Nike
Tommy Hilfiger
Adidas
All three had limited visibility in the marketplace. Each then commenced on a marketing campaign and (at least for a time) dominated their respective markets. It's interesting to note that shoes seem to be pretty ripe pickin's for ad campaigns. All three 'major' companies: Nike, Adidas and Reebok spent time in the sales dumpster at one point or another, and all three were brought back by aggressive marketing.
last, but not least of the examples: CocaCola. They spent a truckload of cash in developing nations to sell their product. They are purely in the business of creating a demand where there was none before.... oh, throw McDonalds in there too. Hamburgers and coke are not the national food in India, Africa etc.... purely a demand fabricated by marketing.... oh, and beer and cigarettes. All of them.
Think about it, when did they start hyping Firefox? The New York Times advertisement only happened after the browser was being downloaded left and right by people via word of mouth.
Word of mouth is advertising - just 'cause it's free doesn't mean it's not a form of marketing...it just means you've convinced your customers to be ambasadors as well. (see lego)
When sales start to stumble, the advertising budget is the first to go when cutting costs.
This particular fun factoid is true because most companies are run by bean-counters, and advertising is classified as an expense, and therefore when sales tumble, expenses are cut... companies also cut r&d, irrespective of the fact that this will also hurt future sales. Sometimes the company needs to live within it's means, and this may mean cutting costs.
theres just no proof that advertising works, but word of mouth definitely does. What do you do then? Make a better product
how I wish that were true. Sadly, there are so many sub-optimal products that outsell far superior products for a variety of reasons. The most common example that the 'best' product doesn't always win in the marketplace is the beta/vhs bit. betamax was the superior technology for the time, but I've never see one... A well marketed lump of sh*t will outsell a poorly marketed pot of gold any day of the week.
just like how Internet Explorer beat Netscape in the first browser war, it wasn't because they had a massive advertising campaign, it was because they made a better browser. Unseating IE is a little harder because it is included in every windows computer out there, but it is possible.
Being included on every PC is a fairly major marketing campaign. Do you think AOL and all those other offers got included for free? I think the fact that it was included with the OS was the driving reason IE beat Netscape. There's going to be a lot of people who take both sides on which ones was better... you know there are still people out there using Netscape...today??
Just spend the money on browser improvements, not silly advertisements that just blend in with the thousands of other advertisements people see every day of their lives.
hmmm... I think that Open Source needs marketing in general terms - my original comment was to that effect. Does that include Firefox? I think so.
It's also evident to large companies that people are influenced by marketing - otherwise, if it was simply a true 'expense' it would get permenantly cut from the budget.
There are two good points
Slashdot Mirror
The National Maritime Research Institute dropped nukes?
I can blame the hammer if it can think for itself ... otherwise I'm blaming the hammerer.
So what I'm saying is that either OP meant that the brass in the "christian" organisation were actually doing the stifling, or they allowed others to manipulate them.
So if the hammer has no capability to act on it's own, then the OP reads to mean that the hammerer is responsible, and if the hammer has the capability to act, then OP reads to mean that the hammer is in fact responsible for it's actions.
Pick one ... to me they're the same.
I think the reason is just plain old math - which one's cheaper?
Option-A: Spend $10k or more on lawyers plus month(s) years(s)? of your life in court, plus the possibility of still losing and paying a Very Large Fine. Best case: Out $10k plus lost life-time + added stress.
Option-B: Fork over $3k now, and get it over with. No chance of further expenses, no stress, no loss of lifetime.
It's the same reason that many companies used to settle small (sub-$million) claims w/o going to court: on the surface it's cheaper to settle then to fight, even if you win ... of course that just sets you up for repeated extortion, so most will fight them now ...
In my IANAL opinion the legal system is broken. It's way too expensive for ordinary people to engage in legal action: only corporations and the rich can regularly engage in asserting their rights or viewpoints on others.
In my IANAL opinion, when indirect costs of doing something are a significant percent of the cost of doing said action (in some cases the single largest part) you need to at least consider that the system is broken
I would agree with the GP: When an ordinary person is no longer able to understand or argue the law, it has become too complex, and is no longer for and of the people. That some lawyers can pollute the law to their own financial advantage is abhorent.
Math is hard.
To make the decision based on "supported closed source" or "having to fix bugs myself" is not in the open/closed source equation.
As many others (including my own post) have noted, you can buy support from lots of companies. Red Hat is probably the best known, so you can have open-source supported software. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive, and so should not be a pivot point in the decision.
Nowhere in the deal was your accounting firm forced to have in-house programming talent. The point was only that if you want to have this talent in-house, you can.
Open-source is about choice and freedom. Choice that closed-source doesn't give you, and freedoms from which closed-source restricts you.
There is nothing (other than a price tag) that closed-source offers that you can not get with open source. There are a lot of options and freedoms that you can elect to exercise with open source that are not options in a closed-source environment.
Bill? Is that you?
Man, that such FUD is posted here...
If anything the argument only applies to closed-source. Let's do a little comparison.
Closed Source:
- You have no way to verify functionality that is promised, other than 'black-box testing'.
- Since you can't see how funcitonality is implemented, you might be left liable for the software if it (for the sake of random fictional example) installs a rootkit on every PC it comes in contact with.
- The vendor makes you waive liabilty in the license, so there's still no one responsible.
- If there is a bug, you must wait until the vendor releases a fix. Without the source you are locked in to waiting until they fix...if they ever do.
- If the vendor de-supports a version you (typically) can't get support from anyone else. This means you are in a forced-upgrade situation where you have to pay for new licenses.
- If the vendor closes shop, you (typically) can't get support from anyone else.
Open Source: ... you can deterimine what the code does, and how it does it, and whether or not it will leave you screwed. Let's not blame our parents (or Canada) for all of our problems, and take some freakin' responsibility over our lives.
- You have the source code to verify functionality that is promised...and sure, you can also run it.
- You have the source code to verify implementation to ensure that it's not installing a rootkit on every PC.
- While there is still no 'vendor' responsible for the operation of the code
- If there is a bug, you can wait until the 'vendor' releases a fix... or! With the source you can write (or commission to write) your own fix.
- If the vendor de-supports a version you simply hire someone else to support it. This means no forced-upgrade.
- If the vendor closes shop you simply hire someone else to support it.
So explain to me again why having the source code available is a liability?
I doubt that 5% of the PC market will have any impact on hardware vendors.
I would argue quite the opposite: We need to write our own drivers where and whenever possible, as this makes more hardware Linux compatible. The larger the compatibility list, the more people will want it on their desktop, the more people using it, the more likely that a hardware mfg decides that writing and supplying drivers is a competative advantage they can use to sell their product.
I think the lack of drivers has two sources:
(1) - 5% market share. As a 'producer' it doesn't make necessarily make sense to spend time capturing such a small percentage of the market - write for Windows and you get in the order of 90% of the market.
(2) - OSS people do the work for you. As a 'producer' having someone else 'pay' for the work means more profit for you.
The closed-source option has neither of these two disadvantages ... and in my opinion the only way to overcome them is to play along with #2 until #1 is no longer true ...
Is it always that slow, or did they just /. themselves?
You will (maybe) still have the option to buy all (say 100) channels for (say $50). But don't think that this means you will be buying channels for $0.50 each
I also think that the end result of a fully true a-la-carte system is going to be less channels and less choice. Maybe that's a good thing - - there's certinaly a lot of crap on TV, but if you think that the History channel is going to outlive Fox's Live Police Chase channel (24hrs a day -- Live Police Chases!! Order Now!! Now!! Now!!) you are sadly mistakened.
I'm not sold in either direction on this one. There's pro's and con's to both models.
If anything I'd be picking 'c - none of the above'. I'm more interested in fully on-demand TV, not a feed. I want to pick what and when I want to watch, and I don't care to subscribe to "channels". In my opinion the days of TV ruling my time should be over - I should control when and where I want to watch what.
PVR + DelayedStart + FastForward
= NoCommercials + InHouseReply
= BetterSportsEnjoyment
I like it.
While companies bitch and moan that their product is being pirated they have so far been a 1-trick pony. They insist on clinging to an outdated business model that simply doesn't work in the new age.
Every other company and business sector had to accomodate the changes that happened around them: The oft-used Buggy-Whip Corporation example - cars arrived making the buggy whip obsolete. I guess in today's age they would have demanded some kind of compensation or royalty be built into every car sold, to keep the poor company going.
Companies need to come up with innovative ideas to survive, and forcing a piece of the physical world into the virtual world might not eliminate piracy, but it will certainly convince a lot of people to just buy the freakin' game.
Without copyright we don't need the GPL. ...right?)
The purpose of the GPL is to ensure that works created by people are available to people in a public commons. If we remove the notion that someone can withhold works from the public commons, then we don't need to create a public commons. ('cause it'll all be public,
The question really is, with the criminal charges and civil suits that are coming out (notably Sony), can companies afford to ignore this?
I'm not suggesting that every company need to have interal software auditing capabilities. However, using only open-source code affords companies some level of assurance that the code has possibly already been peer reviewed, or if they want to, they can hire an independent consulting firm to review it.
The point isn't that everyone always needs to review source code; it's whether or not companies in specific situations can afford not to review the code.
The point I was making was more like an insurance question: At some point risks mount, and a company needs to make a decision on the levels of risk they are willing to accept (and yes, ignoring it is a decision, and some will opt for this, much like people who don't buy automobile insurance)
My specific (immediate) concern is the very situation Sony finds itself in now: they are legally responsible for code they didn't write, since they did distribute it. Can they sue frist4'net? sure, but if a Sony employee goes to jail over this (which while not likely is not impossible) suing f4i does not get that individual their personal time back.
Depends on how you count cost. ... the admins tell me that it's the same cpu...
The shop where I work paid many times more for each CPU in our servers than the entire 3-cpu xbox retails for
I suspect that there will be some good efforts into clustering these things -- they are sold below hardware cost!
Ok, now that I have that off my chest
Since the state is responsible to ensure that voting is fair, transparent and auditable, it makes good sense to make this code open source. I'm not arguing over a specific license - for the purpose of this discussion copyright is not important : only that anyone who wishes to ensure that their consitutional right to vote has been properly administered is able to do so.
This reminds me of the debate over opening the source code on the breathalizers in Florida...
In my opinion, anything that the guv uses should be open source, excepting areas of national security (i.e. where some piece of code gives direct knowledge that shouldn't be handed out ... like missle launch code maybe?)
The how-to-remove was out in a couple of days, and since there is no way to patch existing CDs, the best solution is a massive, loud, wide-spread notification to the public in order to ensure minimum damage.
They'll settle out of court so as not to have their EULA quashed.
This way they can hold it over individual consumers who are likely to decide that it's not worth their life's savings, as opposed to wasting it on an organisation with arguably deeper pockets than Sony has.
How anyone in his position could use the words "rootkit" and "benign" in the same sentence and expect to be taken seriously is beyond me.
How about:
'err, this e-mail seems to be about a routine matter. While it did introduce the notion of 'death and dismemberment', it did not suggest that the actions were anything but benign.
I don't think that any competent techie would consider the word "rookit" as something to ignore in an e-mail ... and if Sony doesn't have techies reviewing things when mgt doesn't understand what they are, then they deserve everything coming to them.
At this time, I'd like to thank Mr. Hesse for doing a world of favour to the anti-DRM community. Keep up the good work!
And when you think of Infected by DRM , think/thank Hesse...
I'll submit your comment for story consideration to get the ball rolling.
I'll admit I haven't read the report, but I'm (personally) left with the impression that a really clever person was hired by MS to design and create a test that linux would either outright fail, or at least appear weak ... if the end-goal is to make any product look poor, it's pretty easy to design the test. ... but the apparent difficulties imposed on the linux side appear to back up these suspicions.
Sorry Doc Thompson -- as other people here have stated: The fact that MS paid the bill and came out shining makes the sales pitch a little suspect (always+no-matter-who!)
Hi Illiterate Coward.
The request was for 'one example where sales increased as a result of advertising', not for 'companies started out small with large advertising departments'.
RTFPP (that's 'Parent Post' for you jerkass.)
When we get attacked by the Nascarians, just stay to their right ... you'll have lots of warning as they make three left turns to get back to you.
Off the top of my head:
Nike
Tommy Hilfiger
Adidas
All three had limited visibility in the marketplace. Each then commenced on a marketing campaign and (at least for a time) dominated their respective markets. It's interesting to note that shoes seem to be pretty ripe pickin's for ad campaigns. All three 'major' companies: Nike, Adidas and Reebok spent time in the sales dumpster at one point or another, and all three were brought back by aggressive marketing. ... oh, throw McDonalds in there too. Hamburgers and coke are not the national food in India, Africa etc.... purely a demand fabricated by marketing. ... oh, and beer and cigarettes. All of them.
last, but not least of the examples: CocaCola. They spent a truckload of cash in developing nations to sell their product. They are purely in the business of creating a demand where there was none before.
Word of mouth is advertising - just 'cause it's free doesn't mean it's not a form of marketing...it just means you've convinced your customers to be ambasadors as well. (see lego)
This particular fun factoid is true because most companies are run by bean-counters, and advertising is classified as an expense, and therefore when sales tumble, expenses are cut... companies also cut r&d, irrespective of the fact that this will also hurt future sales. Sometimes the company needs to live within it's means, and this may mean cutting costs.
how I wish that were true. Sadly, there are so many sub-optimal products that outsell far superior products for a variety of reasons. The most common example that the 'best' product doesn't always win in the marketplace is the beta/vhs bit. betamax was the superior technology for the time, but I've never see one... A well marketed lump of sh*t will outsell a poorly marketed pot of gold any day of the week.
Being included on every PC is a fairly major marketing campaign. Do you think AOL and all those other offers got included for free? I think the fact that it was included with the OS was the driving reason IE beat Netscape. There's going to be a lot of people who take both sides on which ones was better... you know there are still people out there using Netscape...today??
hmmm ... I think that Open Source needs marketing in general terms - my original comment was to that effect. Does that include Firefox? I think so.
It's also evident to large companies that people are influenced by marketing - otherwise, if it was simply a true 'expense' it would get permenantly cut from the budget.
There are two good points
No time to press so many butto