>If you're on Windows, just right-click your DVD drive, "open", and copy all the files to a folder on your hard drive.
If I was doing what I think you are describing, one of my rippers did something like this and produced a bunch of.VOB (I think) extension files. While I could get these to play using DVD playing software, it sucked to have to stop and play each separate.VOB. Is there a way to concatenate all the.VOBs into a single file? This is why I was trying to convert the DVD into an MPEG or AVI or something.
>I encode to h.264, sometimes turn the ac3 into Vorbis (and sometimes not, depends what the original quality is >like and how much I like that movie), then combine that with the subtitles and chapters ripped straight off the >DVD image. I end up with an mkv that's around 300-500 megs. If I find myself doing this enough, I'll probably >write a script to automate it, but I've discovered a process that never seems to get the AV out of sync.
What is your process? Everything I've tried so far makes file that is poor quality, usually audio/video sync problems. I've been trying to convert to.AVI or.MPG - I'm not familiar with mkv. It seems like the encoding programs have half a million settings to fiddle with, and after playing with it for a while, I gave up.
I played around with at least 6 different free applications that purported to, in conjunction with DeCSS, rip and copy DVDs, so as to archive DVDs I already own in my collection, and safegaurd the originals from getting scratched.
I can't even get the damn ripping part to work. Without fail, either the video is crappy or the audio is out of sync with the video.
Then we get to the burning part. It seems a crap-shoot as to whether or not the finished burn will actually work. DVDs I've burned seem to play OK in my new $30 Walmart DVD player, but pixellate and stop playing on my 1998 vintage RCA DVD player.
So I quit trying. I mean it takes hours to rip and burn, and in the end it was a crap-shoot as to whether or not the DVD would actually play.
It's easier to download and play off of the hard drive.
You just quit caring about Iraq? Even if you don't care who dies, what about the $500,000,000,000 we've wasted so far, and the likely $500,000,000,000 we'll waste in the future before we finally pull out?
We're talking about a trillion dollars here. Enough to fund about SEVEN Apollo programs in today's dollars!
Talk about getting screwed over in your business relationship! You ought to care about that.
Well from a layman's point of view, they look the same to me, I think. If the source is open, that means I can take it, compile it, and use it for free, right? If the software is free, I can take it, compile it (if it isn't compiled already) and use it for free, right?
In terms of the end user, I don't see much difference. He gets free software.
>But Open Source software is not going to uphold your freedoms, only Free Software will.
Sorry, I thought they were the same thing?
This is my single biggest push to free software
on
Vista is Watching You
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
>It appears that Microsoft is slowly trying to head towards a near-constant connection of the end-user to their system, for what purposes is a matter for conjecture.
And it's not just Microsoft doing it.
This "phone home" crap is the single biggest thing that is driving me to consider open-source alternative operating systems and software.
The second biggest thing is that it seems more and more that with commercial software every time I install an "upgrade" it is really an upgrade for the/author/ of the software, not the user - more DRM, more restrictions on how I can use the software, instead of better software for/me/. It's seriously getting to where I don't trust commercial upgrades anymore. It seems like 90% of the time or better a commercial upgrade limits what I can do with the application instead of enhances it.
It's really all come down to games for me. If my games would all run on Linux I'd be there tomorrow.
>Nowhere did it say he was giving his music away to the newspaper.
You must have missed the part where I said:
>This is precisely what Prince is doing. He isn't giving away his content for free. he's sold it to a newspaper company >that will give it away to get people to buy (physical) newspapers, and he's giving them away to people who buy physical >tickets to his concert.
Further, from TFA:
>The paper, which sells more than 2m copies a week, will be ramping up its print run in anticipation of a >huge spike in circulation but would not reveal how much the deal with Prince would cost.
Since they would not reveal the cost, it is implied that there was, in fact, a cost.
>Almost. There is one final bit of value that people will be willing to pay for: finding what you want. >Most people won't want to spend hours sifting through all the rubbish to find the one MP3 copy that doesn't sound like crud.
I don't know. It is already trivially simple to find music to download for free. I've heard you can go do a search for "The Eagles", for example, and download to top 5 highest-available-seed-count versions of "Hotel California", for example, and have pretty good confidence that you'll have an acceptable copy in 5 minutes or less. Generally, the more people who are seeding it the better the copy is.
As technology progresses, this will only get easier.
>Most people won't want to go through the work of discovering unknown musicians. >They'll pay for someone else to filter the content and recommend certain musicians and certain digital recordings as being superior.
Web 2.0 web sites, like Digg, and Slashdot, already do a great job of filtering and recommending content. It's not hard to envision a Digg-like website that filters and recommends music, or videos.
>The eagerly awaited new album by Prince is being launched as a free CD with a national Sunday >newspaper in a move that has drawn widespread criticism from music retailers. >. >. >. >Prince, whose Purple Rain sold more than 11m copies, also plans to give away a free copy >of his latest album with tickets for his forthcoming concerts in London
Clearly, Prince gets it. Digital Content is no longer an object to sell itself, as it has no value anymore, but is merely an attraction to attract consumers to purchase other things.
I think this is the mainstream start of the beginning of the end for people who have traditionally sold digital content to consumers. Those days are rapidly drawing to a close. With content so easily copyable, it's economic value is virtually zero. So there is no place for selling digital content to consumers anymore.
BUT, you CAN sell your digital content to an advertising firm, who will use it as flypaper to attract consumers to buy physical things.
This is precisely what Prince is doing. He isn't giving away his content for free. he's sold it to a newspaper company that will give it away to get people to buy (physical) newspapers, and he's giving them away to people who buy physical tickets to his concert.
I'm sure there would be a variety of items in household garbage that could be used as a weapon, or fashioned into one. Obviously, precautions against this sort of thing would have to be taken.
Like...as prisoners leave the garbage sorting work area they have to pass through metal detectors. Or strip naked. Or whatever.
I've said for years it would be a great job for prisoners to do the sorting. Have the household garbage run down a conveyor belt and have them pick out the useful bits.
>Yes, but is this the modern threat? These days, the biggest threat is not from invasion and occupation, but from >global guerilla warfare, also known as terrorism. The weapons we spend all our money on - submarines, fighter jets >and all that high tech robotic crap - is almost useless against all that. There might be an argument for removing a >huge proportion of the money we spend on all that phallic hardware and sticking it into other activities, like >intelligence and hearts-and-minds work to stop the terrorists from hating us so much.
While you are correct that modern weaponry is largely ineffective against terrorism, you are incorrect in assuming that the original threats that the modern weaponry was developed to counter have gone away. They have not. In fact, I would argue that the reason why terrorism has risen to prominence is because the "old school" weaponry/worked/ - it raised the ante to the point where conflicts cannot be solved through that avenue any more.
That does not mean, though, that if you ditched all of that hardware that the old school threats would not come back into play again.
We have successfully developed modern weapons systems that appear to work quite well in defending us against traditional military aggression. Yes, we need to develop new ways to deal with guerrilla fighting. But we need to keep the old tools around, too, or you'll be facing/those/ issues again.
>It seems to me that the low-hanging fruit will *always* seem to have been already done.
I don't know. I just recently re-visted the Space and Rocket center in Huntsville, Alabama.
When I was finished, my overall impression was depressing. It looked like we had done so much up through the 70's. But I was left thinking, "But where's the great accomplishments from/today/?"
Then, too, I had the impresson of this kind of development pattern for spacecraft:
V2: "badass" Mercury: "Bigger, more badass" Gemini: "Bigger, more badass" Apollo: "Bigger, more badass" Shuttle: "Cost Effective"
It felt to me like we switched from the "bigger, more badass" mode to the "cost effective" mode. But I felt like we should still be in the "bigger, more badass" mode. I don't think we've gotten good enough at this stuff yet to switch into penny-pinching mode.
You had me following with the discussion of how nanotechnology was going to produce infinite personal wealth and then what the hell happened? Suddenly you're off on a tirade of everything that's wrong with the US.
Get back to the nanotechnology. This stuff has always sounded like snake oil to me, it always seems to be billed as "It'll cure what ails ya!". What exactly are little particles going to do, specifically? How will they make infinite personal wealth? I had not heard that one before, and I'm interested.
I really don't think the religious nuts are the cause of the decline in technology in this country.
I think commercialism is far more easily the culprit.
We have rapidly entered an area where people want to invest heavily (401K, etc.). But everyone is after/profit/. Not many folks want to invest in "blue sky research" anymore, and even if they did, it's probably cheaper to invest in that kind of research overseas.
Investment in research in this country is probably declining because we have become so heavily profit-motivated and no one sees any profit in research.
Further, I think most of the "low-hanging-fruit" of scientific learning was done between 1945 and 1980. But now perhaps we are reaching the time of diminishing returns, where it requires much heavier investment in the research to produce (profitable) results.
>About the same number of people cannot, or aren't willing to, compile a kernel or configure a server or set up >a point-of-sale system or install their home theatre or whatever else--they hire someone to do it for them and >the software comes along for the ride. It isn't free-gratis for sure, but it's just part of the cost of the >system, just as the cost of non-Free embedded software licensing/royalties/etc is built into a lot of consumer >electronic devices. The important thing is to consider where the VALUE lies.
But this is a different situation than the one we were discussion. In your example, the user has no CHOICE but to buy pay for both the hardware AND the service, because not only can they not replicate the hardware but neither can they set it up. In/those/ cases, the customer gets nailed coming and going.
But in the case we were discussing, Linksys selling routers and giving away the software behind it, the value lies in the widget - the hardware. This is because in this case only one component of the pair can be gotten for free - the software, for those willing to play with that end of it.
>You can plunk down $1000 or more on a box of Windows Server 2003 and it won't do a thing to run your business. >It has to be installed and configured on your hardware to do anything useful at all. More and more, having a >successful business is about how "value added" it is, so unless you are willing to put a great deal of support >and service behind your non-Free application don't expect people to beat down your door.
I personally am not interested in plunking down $1000 for a piece of software if I am them bled dry in perpetuity to pay someone to make it go. I don't want "service after the sale". I want to buy the widget and have it work. If I have to pay a specialist to make it go, it's a scam. The only place this has a chance of working is in the business world. But with consumer software, not a chance.
>You REALLY don't get it do you? Your application NEVER HAD ANY WORTH TO BEGIN WITH--even if it is closed source! >You can burn it onto a CD and mail it to someone and it is only worth a partially-full used CD! It has POTENTIAL worth, >but never had any "real" worth to begin with
No, I guess I really don't get it. I guess I should go back to Best Buy and ask for a refund for all the software I've bought over the years. And to think I've been plunking down $30 to $70 and more all these years for worthless applications.
>Even if you VCR DOES work when you buy it, what happens if it stops working? The cost of warranty service is built >in EVERY ner comsumer-electronics device.
And that's fine with me, because the cost is up-front and fixed. And when the device stops working, usually I just buy another one, because the warranty has expired. This is a better arrangement, to me, then paying forever just to have an endless warranty.
>The thing is, when you go and, say, buy MS office, you aren't buying it! You are REALLY buying a LICENSE and you >CANNOT do whatever you want with the little plastic disc because the contents on it AREN'T EVER YOURS.
Yes, but we all know this is crap. In spite of what the license says, I own the disk. I/can/ do damn near anything I want with it, leastwise I can do as much with it as I could with, say, my VCR, or any other widget I might buy. It's mine. I can reverse engineer it, destroy it, install it on more than one computer (barring technical limitations), whatever I want in my own home, and as long as I don't tell anyone, it's all good.
>Then MS comes out with a new version that introduces incompatibilities and you pay and pay and pay. >You are just kidding yourself if you think closed software is something you can "buy and be done with it".
First of all, there are LOTS of software packages that I have only bought once and that was the end of it. I'm still running Off
>But if your product can be so easily copied, then your business model is flawed... It will only work at all with government >interference to prop up your flawed business model. In a purely open market, you'd be forced to compete hard.
>An entry-level router is NOT that hard to replicate.
99.9% of the computer using population probably can't do it, or doesn't want to. My point is, they are selling the widget, and the software basically goes along for free. They don't have to worry about people tinkering with the software, from a profit/loss perspective, because they still get to sell the widgets, which are hard enough to replicate that most people would rather just buy one.
>Yes, a competitor could undercut you by giving away a derivative product for free, but he has to play by the rules and let everyone see HIS code too, >or you can quite rightly slap him with a copyright-infringement lawsuit. So, if that is what happens, jsut take this derivative product back, >improve it even more and one-up him.
This makes the assumption that, 1) having lost your investment in developing the original, but now worthless (due to being ripped off) application, you have enough resources left to make improvements to it and 2) that improvements can be made that people are willing to pay for.
Sounds risky to me. I wouldn't invest a dime in such a gamble. Basically, you're spending money to develop a product that no one will pay for.
>As I said, if your business model relies on selling a copy of software like it was a widget you will be doomed to failure...
Sure sounds like it to me, too.
>In return for revenue you must add value.
But what I don't understand is how do you do this?
When I buy a VCR, I don't want to pay maintenance to make it work. I don't want to pay maintenance to have access to new and improved versions of it. I just want a stable, reliable product for X dollars, and my transaction with your company is done.
I know the big thing these days is to try and create "Revenue Steams" of perpetual "service contracts". I hate products like that. It's why I have no desire to have a Tivo. I'm not going to pay a subscription for a VCR. I bought the VCR, it should work just fine without me having to pay forever to make it go.
There is only one software application where I have ever been involved in paying maintenance, and that is for CAD (Computer Aided Design) software. The maintenance gives you access to technical support plus access to the latest revisions of the software. For a business-critical application, I can see shelling out a couple of grand a year for this.
But I can't think of any personal software application that I would be willing to pay maintenance for. When McAfee switched to a pay service, I switched to AVG. All the other software packages I have purchased outright, with no expectation of customer service or support.
>As a potential customer, I'd have to ask this guy "what happens if your outfit disappears? How do I get bug fixes? Where would I get support?"
I can't think of a single personal software application I've ever bought where I've considered those things.
For all my office applications, I assume it would be a waste of time to attempt to email or call Microsoft. I don't worry about Microsoft going away, but I've got lots of games I've bought where the company doesn't exist anymore. This isn't a concern to me, because I figure by the time the company goes under either I'm finished with the application or someone else will be making a better version. I don't worry about bug fixes but I do take whatever patches become available. Basically buying software is a crap-shoot you have to do some homework before you buy it and make sure the user community thinks it is reliable or not. I have never gotten support for any personal software package I've ever bought, and I don't expect it. I'm certainly not willing to pay for it.
>Anyways, I still can't comprehend trying to start up little "software company" around some little product you developed in this day and age--the approach is so 1980s.
Well I guess I am a child of the 80's. When I buy a thing, I want to buy the thing and be do
>If I had a software house, I wouldn't base my business off the code I just downloaded from someone else's FTP and >of which I do not know anything (e.g. I am not contributing to).
I wouldn't worry so much about releasing my product to people who/didn't/ know anything about it so much as people who/do/.
There seem to be many examples of this. I don't know if these are open source examples (I always assumed they were), but how many flavors of different P2P clients are out there these days, all presumably running the same basic guts behind the scenes?
I have also assumed that all these different flavors of linux out there today are likewise derived from a common, open ancestor. I'm sure all the folks that developed these different flavors know quite a lot about it.
Slashdot Mirror
>If you're on Windows, just right-click your DVD drive, "open", and copy all the files to a folder on your hard drive.
.VOB (I think) extension files. While I could get these to play using DVD playing software, it sucked to have to stop and play each separate .VOB. Is there a way to concatenate all the .VOBs into a single file? This is why I was trying to convert the DVD into an MPEG or AVI or something.
.AVI or .MPG - I'm not familiar with mkv. It seems like the encoding programs have half a million settings to fiddle with, and after playing with it for a while, I gave up.
If I was doing what I think you are describing, one of my rippers did something like this and produced a bunch of
>I encode to h.264, sometimes turn the ac3 into Vorbis (and sometimes not, depends what the original quality is
>like and how much I like that movie), then combine that with the subtitles and chapters ripped straight off the
>DVD image. I end up with an mkv that's around 300-500 megs. If I find myself doing this enough, I'll probably
>write a script to automate it, but I've discovered a process that never seems to get the AV out of sync.
What is your process? Everything I've tried so far makes file that is poor quality, usually audio/video sync problems. I've been trying to convert to
I played around with at least 6 different free applications that purported to, in conjunction with DeCSS, rip and copy DVDs, so as to archive DVDs I already own in my collection, and safegaurd the originals from getting scratched.
I can't even get the damn ripping part to work. Without fail, either the video is crappy or the audio is out of sync with the video.
Then we get to the burning part. It seems a crap-shoot as to whether or not the finished burn will actually work. DVDs I've burned seem to play OK in my new $30 Walmart DVD player, but pixellate and stop playing on my 1998 vintage RCA DVD player.
So I quit trying. I mean it takes hours to rip and burn, and in the end it was a crap-shoot as to whether or not the DVD would actually play.
It's easier to download and play off of the hard drive.
You just quit caring about Iraq? Even if you don't care who dies, what about the $500,000,000,000 we've wasted so far, and the likely $500,000,000,000 we'll waste in the future before we finally pull out?
We're talking about a trillion dollars here. Enough to fund about SEVEN Apollo programs in today's dollars!
Talk about getting screwed over in your business relationship! You ought to care about that.
Surely you don't need any mathematical skills to do this kind of work...
= 1&mode=thread&commentsort=0&sid=247781&op=Reply ;)
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?threshold
Well from a layman's point of view, they look the same to me, I think. If the source is open, that means I can take it, compile it, and use it for free, right? If the software is free, I can take it, compile it (if it isn't compiled already) and use it for free, right?
In terms of the end user, I don't see much difference. He gets free software.
>But Open Source software is not going to uphold your freedoms, only Free Software will.
Sorry, I thought they were the same thing?
>It appears that Microsoft is slowly trying to head towards a near-constant connection of the end-user to their system, for what purposes is a matter for conjecture.
/author/ of the software, not the user - more DRM, more restrictions on how I can use the software, instead of better software for /me/. It's seriously getting to where I don't trust commercial upgrades anymore. It seems like 90% of the time or better a commercial upgrade limits what I can do with the application instead of enhances it.
And it's not just Microsoft doing it.
This "phone home" crap is the single biggest thing that is driving me to consider open-source alternative operating systems and software.
The second biggest thing is that it seems more and more that with commercial software every time I install an "upgrade" it is really an upgrade for the
It's really all come down to games for me. If my games would all run on Linux I'd be there tomorrow.
>Nowhere did it say he was giving his music away to the newspaper.
You must have missed the part where I said:
>This is precisely what Prince is doing. He isn't giving away his content for free. he's sold it to a newspaper company
>that will give it away to get people to buy (physical) newspapers, and he's giving them away to people who buy physical
>tickets to his concert.
Further, from TFA:
>The paper, which sells more than 2m copies a week, will be ramping up its print run in anticipation of a
>huge spike in circulation but would not reveal how much the deal with Prince would cost.
Since they would not reveal the cost, it is implied that there was, in fact, a cost.
>Almost. There is one final bit of value that people will be willing to pay for: finding what you want.
>Most people won't want to spend hours sifting through all the rubbish to find the one MP3 copy that doesn't sound like crud.
I don't know. It is already trivially simple to find music to download for free. I've heard you can go do a search for "The Eagles", for example, and download to top 5 highest-available-seed-count versions of "Hotel California", for example, and have pretty good confidence that you'll have an acceptable copy in 5 minutes or less. Generally, the more people who are seeding it the better the copy is.
As technology progresses, this will only get easier.
>Most people won't want to go through the work of discovering unknown musicians.
>They'll pay for someone else to filter the content and recommend certain musicians and certain digital recordings as being superior.
Web 2.0 web sites, like Digg, and Slashdot, already do a great job of filtering and recommending content. It's not hard to envision a Digg-like website that filters and recommends music, or videos.
From TFA:
>The eagerly awaited new album by Prince is being launched as a free CD with a national Sunday
>newspaper in a move that has drawn widespread criticism from music retailers.
>.
>.
>.
>Prince, whose Purple Rain sold more than 11m copies, also plans to give away a free copy
>of his latest album with tickets for his forthcoming concerts in London
Clearly, Prince gets it. Digital Content is no longer an object to sell itself, as it has no value anymore, but is merely an attraction to attract consumers to purchase other things.
I think this is the mainstream start of the beginning of the end for people who have traditionally sold digital content to consumers. Those days are rapidly drawing to a close. With content so easily copyable, it's economic value is virtually zero. So there is no place for selling digital content to consumers anymore.
BUT, you CAN sell your digital content to an advertising firm, who will use it as flypaper to attract consumers to buy physical things.
This is precisely what Prince is doing. He isn't giving away his content for free. he's sold it to a newspaper company that will give it away to get people to buy (physical) newspapers, and he's giving them away to people who buy physical tickets to his concert.
In the public mind, digital music already is rapidly approaching zero economic value, and this scares the crap out of the Music Industry.
Of course they are pissed at Prince - his action reaffirms the value of digital music in the public mind.
I was waiting for this response.
I'm sure there would be a variety of items in household garbage that could be used as a weapon, or fashioned into one. Obviously, precautions against this sort of thing would have to be taken.
Like...as prisoners leave the garbage sorting work area they have to pass through metal detectors. Or strip naked. Or whatever.
I've said for years it would be a great job for prisoners to do the sorting. Have the household garbage run down a conveyor belt and have them pick out the useful bits.
>Yes, but is this the modern threat? These days, the biggest threat is not from invasion and occupation, but from
/worked/ - it raised the ante to the point where conflicts cannot be solved through that avenue any more.
/those/ issues again.
>global guerilla warfare, also known as terrorism. The weapons we spend all our money on - submarines, fighter jets
>and all that high tech robotic crap - is almost useless against all that. There might be an argument for removing a
>huge proportion of the money we spend on all that phallic hardware and sticking it into other activities, like
>intelligence and hearts-and-minds work to stop the terrorists from hating us so much.
While you are correct that modern weaponry is largely ineffective against terrorism, you are incorrect in assuming that the original threats that the modern weaponry was developed to counter have gone away. They have not. In fact, I would argue that the reason why terrorism has risen to prominence is because the "old school" weaponry
That does not mean, though, that if you ditched all of that hardware that the old school threats would not come back into play again.
We have successfully developed modern weapons systems that appear to work quite well in defending us against traditional military aggression. Yes, we need to develop new ways to deal with guerrilla fighting. But we need to keep the old tools around, too, or you'll be facing
>Britain wants to believe it can still sit at the big table.
>
>I say let's stop trying to do that.
Then you will have terms dictated to you by those who still sit at the big table.
A buddy of mine said that they used to fire up the radar in port sometimes and it would cook seagulls right out of the air.
I don't know - I'm in the United States, and I've never had digital TV, and my old 1998 RCA does it just fine.
My TV automatically downloads, somehow (over the air? cable?) channel lineup listings through the Guide+ system.
Could a computer not do the same thing?
>It seems to me that the low-hanging fruit will *always* seem to have been already done.
/today/?"
I don't know. I just recently re-visted the Space and Rocket center in Huntsville, Alabama.
When I was finished, my overall impression was depressing. It looked like we had done so much up through the 70's. But I was left thinking, "But where's the great accomplishments from
Then, too, I had the impresson of this kind of development pattern for spacecraft:
V2: "badass"
Mercury: "Bigger, more badass"
Gemini: "Bigger, more badass"
Apollo: "Bigger, more badass"
Shuttle: "Cost Effective"
It felt to me like we switched from the "bigger, more badass" mode to the "cost effective" mode. But I felt like we should still be in the "bigger, more badass" mode. I don't think we've gotten good enough at this stuff yet to switch into penny-pinching mode.
It's depressing.
You had me following with the discussion of how nanotechnology was going to produce infinite personal wealth and then what the hell happened? Suddenly you're off on a tirade of everything that's wrong with the US.
Get back to the nanotechnology. This stuff has always sounded like snake oil to me, it always seems to be billed as "It'll cure what ails ya!". What exactly are little particles going to do, specifically? How will they make infinite personal wealth? I had not heard that one before, and I'm interested.
I really don't think the religious nuts are the cause of the decline in technology in this country.
/profit/. Not many folks want to invest in "blue sky research" anymore, and even if they did, it's probably cheaper to invest in that kind of research overseas.
I think commercialism is far more easily the culprit.
We have rapidly entered an area where people want to invest heavily (401K, etc.). But everyone is after
Investment in research in this country is probably declining because we have become so heavily profit-motivated and no one sees any profit in research.
Further, I think most of the "low-hanging-fruit" of scientific learning was done between 1945 and 1980. But now perhaps we are reaching the time of diminishing returns, where it requires much heavier investment in the research to produce (profitable) results.
>About the same number of people cannot, or aren't willing to, compile a kernel or configure a server or set up
/those/ cases, the customer gets nailed coming and going.
/can/ do damn near anything I want with it, leastwise I can do as much with it as I could with, say, my VCR, or any other widget I might buy. It's mine. I can reverse engineer it, destroy it, install it on more than one computer (barring technical limitations), whatever I want in my own home, and as long as I don't tell anyone, it's all good.
>a point-of-sale system or install their home theatre or whatever else--they hire someone to do it for them and
>the software comes along for the ride. It isn't free-gratis for sure, but it's just part of the cost of the
>system, just as the cost of non-Free embedded software licensing/royalties/etc is built into a lot of consumer
>electronic devices. The important thing is to consider where the VALUE lies.
But this is a different situation than the one we were discussion. In your example, the user has no CHOICE but to buy pay for both the hardware AND the service, because not only can they not replicate the hardware but neither can they set it up. In
But in the case we were discussing, Linksys selling routers and giving away the software behind it, the value lies in the widget - the hardware. This is because in this case only one component of the pair can be gotten for free - the software, for those willing to play with that end of it.
>You can plunk down $1000 or more on a box of Windows Server 2003 and it won't do a thing to run your business.
>It has to be installed and configured on your hardware to do anything useful at all. More and more, having a
>successful business is about how "value added" it is, so unless you are willing to put a great deal of support
>and service behind your non-Free application don't expect people to beat down your door.
I personally am not interested in plunking down $1000 for a piece of software if I am them bled dry in perpetuity to pay someone to make it go. I don't want "service after the sale". I want to buy the widget and have it work. If I have to pay a specialist to make it go, it's a scam. The only place this has a chance of working is in the business world. But with consumer software, not a chance.
>You REALLY don't get it do you? Your application NEVER HAD ANY WORTH TO BEGIN WITH--even if it is closed source!
>You can burn it onto a CD and mail it to someone and it is only worth a partially-full used CD! It has POTENTIAL worth,
>but never had any "real" worth to begin with
No, I guess I really don't get it. I guess I should go back to Best Buy and ask for a refund for all the software I've bought over the years. And to think I've been plunking down $30 to $70 and more all these years for worthless applications.
>Even if you VCR DOES work when you buy it, what happens if it stops working? The cost of warranty service is built
>in EVERY ner comsumer-electronics device.
And that's fine with me, because the cost is up-front and fixed. And when the device stops working, usually I just buy another one, because the warranty has expired. This is a better arrangement, to me, then paying forever just to have an endless warranty.
>The thing is, when you go and, say, buy MS office, you aren't buying it! You are REALLY buying a LICENSE and you
>CANNOT do whatever you want with the little plastic disc because the contents on it AREN'T EVER YOURS.
Yes, but we all know this is crap. In spite of what the license says, I own the disk. I
>Then MS comes out with a new version that introduces incompatibilities and you pay and pay and pay.
>You are just kidding yourself if you think closed software is something you can "buy and be done with it".
First of all, there are LOTS of software packages that I have only bought once and that was the end of it. I'm still running Off
>But if your product can be so easily copied, then your business model is flawed... It will only work at all with government
>interference to prop up your flawed business model. In a purely open market, you'd be forced to compete hard.
How would you do it?
>An entry-level router is NOT that hard to replicate.
99.9% of the computer using population probably can't do it, or doesn't want to. My point is, they are selling the widget, and the software basically goes along for free. They don't have to worry about people tinkering with the software, from a profit/loss perspective, because they still get to sell the widgets, which are hard enough to replicate that most people would rather just buy one.
>Yes, a competitor could undercut you by giving away a derivative product for free, but he has to play by the rules and let everyone see HIS code too,
>or you can quite rightly slap him with a copyright-infringement lawsuit. So, if that is what happens, jsut take this derivative product back,
>improve it even more and one-up him.
This makes the assumption that, 1) having lost your investment in developing the original, but now worthless (due to being ripped off) application, you have enough resources left to make improvements to it and 2) that improvements can be made that people are willing to pay for.
Sounds risky to me. I wouldn't invest a dime in such a gamble. Basically, you're spending money to develop a product that no one will pay for.
>As I said, if your business model relies on selling a copy of software like it was a widget you will be doomed to failure...
Sure sounds like it to me, too.
>In return for revenue you must add value.
But what I don't understand is how do you do this?
When I buy a VCR, I don't want to pay maintenance to make it work. I don't want to pay maintenance to have access to new and improved versions of it. I just want a stable, reliable product for X dollars, and my transaction with your company is done.
I know the big thing these days is to try and create "Revenue Steams" of perpetual "service contracts". I hate products like that. It's why I have no desire to have a Tivo. I'm not going to pay a subscription for a VCR. I bought the VCR, it should work just fine without me having to pay forever to make it go.
There is only one software application where I have ever been involved in paying maintenance, and that is for CAD (Computer Aided Design) software. The maintenance gives you access to technical support plus access to the latest revisions of the software. For a business-critical application, I can see shelling out a couple of grand a year for this.
But I can't think of any personal software application that I would be willing to pay maintenance for. When McAfee switched to a pay service, I switched to AVG. All the other software packages I have purchased outright, with no expectation of customer service or support.
>As a potential customer, I'd have to ask this guy "what happens if your outfit disappears? How do I get bug fixes? Where would I get support?"
I can't think of a single personal software application I've ever bought where I've considered those things.
For all my office applications, I assume it would be a waste of time to attempt to email or call Microsoft. I don't worry about Microsoft going away, but I've got lots of games I've bought where the company doesn't exist anymore. This isn't a concern to me, because I figure by the time the company goes under either I'm finished with the application or someone else will be making a better version. I don't worry about bug fixes but I do take whatever patches become available. Basically buying software is a crap-shoot you have to do some homework before you buy it and make sure the user community thinks it is reliable or not. I have never gotten support for any personal software package I've ever bought, and I don't expect it. I'm certainly not willing to pay for it.
>Anyways, I still can't comprehend trying to start up little "software company" around some little product you developed in this day and age--the approach is so 1980s.
Well I guess I am a child of the 80's. When I buy a thing, I want to buy the thing and be do
>If I had a software house, I wouldn't base my business off the code I just downloaded from someone else's FTP and
/didn't/ know anything about it so much as people who /do/.
>of which I do not know anything (e.g. I am not contributing to).
I wouldn't worry so much about releasing my product to people who
There seem to be many examples of this. I don't know if these are open source examples (I always assumed they were), but how many flavors of different P2P clients are out there these days, all presumably running the same basic guts behind the scenes?
I have also assumed that all these different flavors of linux out there today are likewise derived from a common, open ancestor. I'm sure all the folks that developed these different flavors know quite a lot about it.