I can't read your links because of a good slashdotting, but from what I see, your arguments are flawed.
1. Don't let a spammer verify your email address
This isn't a huge problem for spammers. If they send you an HTML email, then just opening the email (or previewing it in Outlook) can provide the verification that they need.
Additionally, the extremely low cost of spamming means that bogus addresses are a marginal problem at best. The spammer would rather take a chance that the email account is active and send the spam than not send it.
2. Don't post your email address on the internet
I learned this lesson too late. A Google search pulled up a dozen newsgroup messages with my email address in them. Nine were posted by me, and I asked Google to remove them. Unfortunately, 3 are by other people quoting me, and I have no recourse to remove them. Spammers will therefore have permanent access to my main email address.
Additionally, I have no control over emails that other people send that include my address. I hate "pass along" emails that certain people get and feel the need to send to everyone in their address book, but I can't help that a) my email address is included in a batch of 50 others, and b) it's a very convenient way for spammers to collect verified email addresses.
3. Secure your email client
By this I assume you mean using client-level filtering. I do. Alot. I typically get about 60-80 pieces of spam a day, and have set up 30 or so filters. But that only catches about 2/3's.
Simply put, there is no client-level filtering solution that is going to work 100% of the time.
4. Avoid common email traps
I assume here that you mean things like "posting to newsgroups". You can only avoid traps that you already know about, and most people don't know about them.
Besides, why should we live in fear of the spammers? They are encroaching on our free expression. I certainly think that the structure of email needs to be revisited to put the prohibitions on the spammers, not the recipients.
The problem is that email has essentially remained unchanged since... well, since ever. Unlike HTML was given over to a standards board, and has evolved from its humble beginnings, and has been enhanced universally through technologies like JavaScript, Flash, Java, et. al.
I think the spam problem is only one part of the email issue. Other issues might be that email messages are completely unsecure, and there is no authentication/validation of the sender.
A number of people have been saying it, and a whitelist server system seems to be the way to go. A signature key, such as in PGP, seems to be a good start, but PGP isn't a whitelist system. You also run into the problem in whitelist servers of not being able to receive the unsolicited mails that you really, really want to receive (like the email from the headhunter who wants to offer you $20k more than you're making now).
At the risk of speaking blasphemy here, I'd suggest a whitelist server system that charged a postage on unsolicited emails of 10 cents, and the recipient has the option to accept or reject the fee. For every fee the recipient accepts, the ISP also gets a cut for their trouble, to encourage adoption of whitelist servers.
Of course, any solution that doesn't have universal adoption won't deter anyone. Spam is the symptom, there should be a consortium to deal with the root problems.
Nowadays, the tax rate is so oppressive one person has to work just to pay the tax burden.
And yet, like the sheep that we are, we will continue voting for republicrats or demopublicans that'll just keep sticking it to us.
How can you say you are for tax cuts and against the Republicans, who are cutting taxes? Maybe it's not happening as fast or as much as we'd all like, but they are getting it done.
In 10 years, the drive will be worthless as a backup media, anyway... Heck, in 3 years it'll be worthless, because when he upgrades his RAID array in 3 years, it will be much, much bigger. In 3 years he may be trying to back up a terrabyte, and his 200 GB IDE drive will be far too small for the job.
Not that that'll be a problem, though, because he'll just pick up some 1 TB FireWire2 drives then for about what he's paying now for 200 GB.
I'm always very careful about not previewing spam email. I try to select all of the messages as a group and delete them. It's fairly easy to tell from the subject and the sender which ones are spam; I don't have to preview messages with subjects like "Barnyard animals!" to know that I don't want it.
Besides, previewing HTML spams only give the spammer the means to validate your email address and keep your account active.
if you're set for life and never have to worry about where the next job is coming from, and never intend to quit working. For the rest of us, there's nothing wrong with getting creative with the licensing of our work in order to get residual income. If the market will bear it (i.e., if somebody will pay you for it!), then absolutely do it.
I work for an advertising agency, and when we produce a logo for a client, the client has the option of either licensing the logo from us or buying it outright. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? It would seem like every company would want to own their logo, but no, there are a lot of companies that are comfortable with licensing only.
In effect, the customer believes they are getting a great deal because it doesn't cost them anything to license the logo while they employ us as an agency; they can put off the cost of purchasing the logo outright when (if ever) they swtich agencies.
Setting up our pricing in this way has several benefits: 1) it allows us to set a premium price on the logo that the client is not yet committed to, but is fully aware of and has accepted, 2) the premium price establishes our regular cost as a good value, and 3) it serves as a means to retain the client.
Obviously, if we aren't doing great work for our clients then we don't deserve to retain their business; but, on the other side of the coin, we also have to assume that our client is hearing pitches from the competition (mostly informal) on a fairly regular basis, so the more "entanglements" the client has with us, the less likely they are to move on a whim.
I don't know if it's realistic to approach code licensing in the same way, but it is a possibility.
Save CmdrTaco's life! STOP THIS INSANITY AND SHUT DOWN THE STAR WARS SERVER!!
We've already got a man on the inside; he works on the movies, and he's pretty high up (his first name is George; I can't tell you his last name, lest I blow his cover). One more prequel like the first two, and the Star Wars fan base will be completely dried up.
Opera isn't running on 90% of all computers out there. I'm not even sure that Opera is running on 10% of all computers out there.
Opera could have a big gaping security hole, but the impact is still going to be marginal because of the (relatively) small size of the installed base.
Even William Shatner didn't have a subspace communicator built into the badge on his sweatshirt... You'll have to wait unti the "Ask Patrick Stewart" thread to find out about that one.
Kids sites tend to use a lot of Flash, from what I've seen. My 3 year old spends a lot of time playing games on the Disney and Noggin sites.
Unfortunately, the Flash player for Linux is still at version 5. Not a huge problem, as most Flash apps are still compatible with 5, but it does mean that you will run into problems until they release an update.
Also note that the whole point of bundling is that the OEMs pay a massively reduced price for Windows, and they pass that saving on to the end consumer. That's why OEM's signed up with Microsoft to put a copy on every PC in the first place. It's a win-win-win for Microsoft, the OEM, and the end users. Everyone trades (less money) for (more convenience).
Read the whole post, you'll see that I made that point.
Which almost no-one does because they're either getting it bundled with the hardware, or they're a corporation with a volume-licensing deal.
Just like I said... Reread the quote you replied to.
LOL, you can't claim to be a capitalist then in the next sentence say you'd like the government to intervene!!
No, I said I'd rather see the government adjust their buying habits, not pass legislation. The government is a consumer, too. There is a difference here that you obviously can't appreciate. Passing legislation or breaking up Microsoft would be a direct intervention in the market; changing buying habits to more sensibly take advantage of free software is simply making a consumption choice.
As one of Microsoft's largest customers, by not investigating cheaper or more sensible options the government is in effect propping up the Microsoft monoploy. My point is, they don't have to.
You won't, because the dirty little secret that no Slashbot will ever admit out loud is that for the vast majority of users, considering software availability, cost of training, cost of hardware, availability of third-party documentation, etc, Windows really is the best desktop OS in the world right now. MacOS X has less software available, has fewer users who already know how to use it, runs on more expensive hardware, and doesn't have very many books written about it. It might be "better" in a purely technical sense, but purely technical decisions aren't made in the real world.
I'm not just arguing for OS X. I'm arguing mainly for Linux.
Software availability is not an issue in a vertical market like the US military; they are going to write their own software, anyway. And for Office-type apps, there are alternatives to MS Office. And if they really need to run Windows apps, there's no reason that the select few couldn't either dual-boot or run Wine on Linux PC's. Or just let those people run Windows.
However, you're very quick to dismiss out of hand the possibility that the government could make open source work. As I Navy veteran, I've seen first-hand the types of applications that the military uses, and they're not as bound to Windows as you suggest. In fact, it would be better for the military (and the government in general) to move to platform-independent applications whenever possible.
Training is also not an issue. The military is going to put their staff through IT training schools anyway, they could just as easily teach *nix as teach Windows.
Cost of hardware? Why would the cost of hardware be more? Linux does more on less hardware than Windows.
Support costs? Even if it goes up, I see it as a wash because the government isn't paying per-seat licensing fees and isn't spending resources doing software audits.
Windows is the best desktop OS? Again, a negligible point. Through most of the 80's, the Mac OS was the best desktop OS, but MS-DOS still beat it out because of the cost. All of the major desktop GUI's are good enough, I would say that arguing over the desktop interface is irrelevant.
I'll start with the biggest piece of ugliness about the military: the supply system that's in place. Monies allocated to units are divided into multiple accounts, which must be completely depleted by fiscal year's end. If a unit has money carry over to Oct. 1st, they get less money than they were allocated the year before. It's an ugly, harsh, stupid way of doing things, but the military is just too big to allow for anything else, unless you want to add several thousand accountants to each branch of the military.
Actually, I know this is true because I was stationed at the Naval Air Station in Key West for 2 years. In order to spend the rest of the budget, the pilots would fly up to Maine to get fresh lobster for the officers' parties (in spite of the fact that Key West has lobster, too), or during the last week of the fiscal year, they'd put almost every plane in the air doing touch-and-go's, which BTW requires that you dump all of the fuel in the wings before you touch down on the runway; and they'd dump a LOT of fuel just to spend the money.
Getting back to IT, though... spending money on IT isn't hard. Just start turning over the computers every two years instead of every three years, and you can blow through a gratuitous amount of cash.
In the military, just like civilian life, there are a lot of people that go into IT because they believe it will land them a high paying job with little real work involved in getting or keeping their employment. Unfortunately, that motivation does little for learning much above the essentials.
True, but the military has its own training infrastructure, and therefore the ability to drive its stategic IT decisions. Start putting *nix questions in the advancement tests and people will learn it if they want to make rank. Also kick off an initiative to convert the most popular duty stations to *nix installations, and again you incentivize people to learn this stuff. A third way, and a way to get people to sign up for the special training, would be to hand out reenlistment bonuses to IT staff who pass *nix qualification tests.
Paying for the bonuses shouldn't bee too much of a problem, when you use the money that you used to pay to Microsoft for licensing.
You are aware that Apple's software has always been the loss-leader for it's hardware, right?
Loss leader? I seriously doubt that. According to Apple, Jaguar sold 100,000 copies the first weekend of its release. If you subtract 25% of the $129 for packaging, retail markup and whatnot, that's still a cool million Apple made in the first two days. For me, personally, that would mark the third time I've paid for OS X (the $15 for the public beta, the $129 for the initial release and now $129 for Jaguar).
And yes, a good number of copies are sold at a bundle price with hardware. But I seriously doubt that the contribution margin coming from those sales put the OS X division in the red. Remember, there wouldn't be ANY hardware sales without a good OS running on it, so you can't dismiss a computer sale as a profit for the hardware division only.
Look at Apple. Everyone knows that Apple has generous profit margins. However, they went out and bought their OS outright, and then spent another 4 years developing it before they offered a shrink-wrapped version. And the price they charge? $129. And that for an OS that serves 5% of the computer market.
Microsoft, OTOH, initially develops NT in partnership with IBM, so some of their costs are defrayed. Then they are the sole developer, but they have several releases, in addition to charging a per-seat license on for the server version, so they make up their development costs with each version. Now they are up to WinXP, which costs $300 for the professional version, which they are selling to 90% of the computer market. It should be obvious that MS is charging far, far more than they need to.
Also, keep in mind that most sales of Windows XP are preinstalled bundles on PC's, so who knows how much profit is made when you shell out the $300 for a shrink-wrapped copy.
I'm sorry, but when someone is making 85%+ margins AND shutting other companies out of entering the market, I don't know of a clearer definition of monopoly.
As a capitalist, I'd much rather see the market solve it's own problems. One way would certainly be for the government to seek out open source solutions as much as possible. Particularly the military; they already train their personnel on troubleshooting PC's, there's no reason they can't put more emphasis on Linux.
I just wouldn't want to see it issued as a directive that all departments must switch to Linux, because I'd hate to see Mac OS X get shut out.
Congratulations: you've shown you've read the liberal talking points about how to dismiss criticisms of Brock's book without knowing why I said what I said.
How do you disprove hearsay? "He said/she said" is very tough to disprove, and a lot of Brock's allegations fall into that category.
And by the way, I've seen liberal commentators come down just as hard on Brock. Show me some respected liberal journalists at respected news organizations who think that we should now take Brock seriously. I guarantee that it's a small enough group of people that they could fit in my coat closet with room to spare.
Face it, Brock is a confessed liar and opportunist. As a conservative, I now dismiss his early stuff, too, because the guy has ZERO credibility.
For more enlightenment, read David Brock's Blinded by the Right.
Read David Brock for enlightenment? The guy's an admitted liar!
So, was he lying then and telling the truth now, or was he telling the truth then and lying now? I personally think the latter. Maybe he lied both then AND now!
Brock is a controversial writer who needs to sell books. He hadn't had a best seller in a long time, so he hatches this plan to write a book the refutes all of his previous books. Instant best seller and it gets him back on all the talk shows.
I think what you probably meant to say was, "Read David Brock for some liberal warm fuzzies." But enlightenment? Please.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't read your links because of a good slashdotting, but from what I see, your arguments are flawed.
1. Don't let a spammer verify your email address
This isn't a huge problem for spammers. If they send you an HTML email, then just opening the email (or previewing it in Outlook) can provide the verification that they need.
Additionally, the extremely low cost of spamming means that bogus addresses are a marginal problem at best. The spammer would rather take a chance that the email account is active and send the spam than not send it.
2. Don't post your email address on the internet
I learned this lesson too late. A Google search pulled up a dozen newsgroup messages with my email address in them. Nine were posted by me, and I asked Google to remove them. Unfortunately, 3 are by other people quoting me, and I have no recourse to remove them. Spammers will therefore have permanent access to my main email address.
Additionally, I have no control over emails that other people send that include my address. I hate "pass along" emails that certain people get and feel the need to send to everyone in their address book, but I can't help that a) my email address is included in a batch of 50 others, and b) it's a very convenient way for spammers to collect verified email addresses.
3. Secure your email client
By this I assume you mean using client-level filtering. I do. Alot. I typically get about 60-80 pieces of spam a day, and have set up 30 or so filters. But that only catches about 2/3's.
Simply put, there is no client-level filtering solution that is going to work 100% of the time.
4. Avoid common email traps
I assume here that you mean things like "posting to newsgroups". You can only avoid traps that you already know about, and most people don't know about them.
Besides, why should we live in fear of the spammers? They are encroaching on our free expression. I certainly think that the structure of email needs to be revisited to put the prohibitions on the spammers, not the recipients.
The link is wrong... if you click on it, you are taken to a cybersquatter's page with a butt-ugly picture of Alan Greenspan.
The real link to The Economist is here.
Sauroman is profusely apologetic that he endorsed Strom Thurman for president.
The problem is that email has essentially remained unchanged since... well, since ever. Unlike HTML was given over to a standards board, and has evolved from its humble beginnings, and has been enhanced universally through technologies like JavaScript, Flash, Java, et. al.
I think the spam problem is only one part of the email issue. Other issues might be that email messages are completely unsecure, and there is no authentication/validation of the sender.
A number of people have been saying it, and a whitelist server system seems to be the way to go. A signature key, such as in PGP, seems to be a good start, but PGP isn't a whitelist system. You also run into the problem in whitelist servers of not being able to receive the unsolicited mails that you really, really want to receive (like the email from the headhunter who wants to offer you $20k more than you're making now).
At the risk of speaking blasphemy here, I'd suggest a whitelist server system that charged a postage on unsolicited emails of 10 cents, and the recipient has the option to accept or reject the fee. For every fee the recipient accepts, the ISP also gets a cut for their trouble, to encourage adoption of whitelist servers.
Of course, any solution that doesn't have universal adoption won't deter anyone. Spam is the symptom, there should be a consortium to deal with the root problems.
Nowadays, the tax rate is so oppressive one person has to work just to pay the tax burden.
And yet, like the sheep that we are, we will continue voting for republicrats or demopublicans that'll just keep sticking it to us.
How can you say you are for tax cuts and against the Republicans, who are cutting taxes? Maybe it's not happening as fast or as much as we'd all like, but they are getting it done.
Neither of which is the chief at Intel...
In 10 years, the drive will be worthless as a backup media, anyway... Heck, in 3 years it'll be worthless, because when he upgrades his RAID array in 3 years, it will be much, much bigger. In 3 years he may be trying to back up a terrabyte, and his 200 GB IDE drive will be far too small for the job.
Not that that'll be a problem, though, because he'll just pick up some 1 TB FireWire2 drives then for about what he's paying now for 200 GB.
Slashdot gets slashdotted! I love it!
I'm always very careful about not previewing spam email. I try to select all of the messages as a group and delete them. It's fairly easy to tell from the subject and the sender which ones are spam; I don't have to preview messages with subjects like "Barnyard animals!" to know that I don't want it.
Besides, previewing HTML spams only give the spammer the means to validate your email address and keep your account active.
Aint It Cool acts like it is slashdotted. Linking to an aintitcool.com story on Slashdot is only pouring more gasoline on the fire.
I vote for:
Lord of the Rings II: Electric Boogaloo
and maybe a huge dance number on the battle front with Michael Jackson and 40,000 orcs.
Michael Jackson will have dibs on Diana Ross's face when she passes away...
if you're set for life and never have to worry about where the next job is coming from, and never intend to quit working. For the rest of us, there's nothing wrong with getting creative with the licensing of our work in order to get residual income. If the market will bear it (i.e., if somebody will pay you for it!), then absolutely do it.
I work for an advertising agency, and when we produce a logo for a client, the client has the option of either licensing the logo from us or buying it outright. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? It would seem like every company would want to own their logo, but no, there are a lot of companies that are comfortable with licensing only.
In effect, the customer believes they are getting a great deal because it doesn't cost them anything to license the logo while they employ us as an agency; they can put off the cost of purchasing the logo outright when (if ever) they swtich agencies.
Setting up our pricing in this way has several benefits: 1) it allows us to set a premium price on the logo that the client is not yet committed to, but is fully aware of and has accepted, 2) the premium price establishes our regular cost as a good value, and 3) it serves as a means to retain the client.
Obviously, if we aren't doing great work for our clients then we don't deserve to retain their business; but, on the other side of the coin, we also have to assume that our client is hearing pitches from the competition (mostly informal) on a fairly regular basis, so the more "entanglements" the client has with us, the less likely they are to move on a whim.
I don't know if it's realistic to approach code licensing in the same way, but it is a possibility.
Save CmdrTaco's life! STOP THIS INSANITY AND SHUT DOWN THE STAR WARS SERVER!!
We've already got a man on the inside; he works on the movies, and he's pretty high up (his first name is George; I can't tell you his last name, lest I blow his cover). One more prequel like the first two, and the Star Wars fan base will be completely dried up.
MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA....
Opera isn't running on 90% of all computers out there. I'm not even sure that Opera is running on 10% of all computers out there.
Opera could have a big gaping security hole, but the impact is still going to be marginal because of the (relatively) small size of the installed base.
For the same reason Outlook and Word needed a scripting engine that was enabled by default; because they say so and to hell with security.
Even William Shatner didn't have a subspace communicator built into the badge on his sweatshirt... You'll have to wait unti the "Ask Patrick Stewart" thread to find out about that one.
Kids sites tend to use a lot of Flash, from what I've seen. My 3 year old spends a lot of time playing games on the Disney and Noggin sites.
Unfortunately, the Flash player for Linux is still at version 5. Not a huge problem, as most Flash apps are still compatible with 5, but it does mean that you will run into problems until they release an update.
What was the locker combination in episode 25 after you left your quarters the last time and opened your safe?
Also note that the whole point of bundling is that the OEMs pay a massively reduced price for Windows, and they pass that saving on to the end consumer. That's why OEM's signed up with Microsoft to put a copy on every PC in the first place. It's a win-win-win for Microsoft, the OEM, and the end users. Everyone trades (less money) for (more convenience).
Read the whole post, you'll see that I made that point.
Which almost no-one does because they're either getting it bundled with the hardware, or they're a corporation with a volume-licensing deal.
Just like I said... Reread the quote you replied to.
LOL, you can't claim to be a capitalist then in the next sentence say you'd like the government to intervene!!
No, I said I'd rather see the government adjust their buying habits, not pass legislation. The government is a consumer, too. There is a difference here that you obviously can't appreciate. Passing legislation or breaking up Microsoft would be a direct intervention in the market; changing buying habits to more sensibly take advantage of free software is simply making a consumption choice.
As one of Microsoft's largest customers, by not investigating cheaper or more sensible options the government is in effect propping up the Microsoft monoploy. My point is, they don't have to.
You won't, because the dirty little secret that no Slashbot will ever admit out loud is that for the vast majority of users, considering software availability, cost of training, cost of hardware, availability of third-party documentation, etc, Windows really is the best desktop OS in the world right now. MacOS X has less software available, has fewer users who already know how to use it, runs on more expensive hardware, and doesn't have very many books written about it. It might be "better" in a purely technical sense, but purely technical decisions aren't made in the real world.
I'm not just arguing for OS X. I'm arguing mainly for Linux.
Software availability is not an issue in a vertical market like the US military; they are going to write their own software, anyway. And for Office-type apps, there are alternatives to MS Office. And if they really need to run Windows apps, there's no reason that the select few couldn't either dual-boot or run Wine on Linux PC's. Or just let those people run Windows.
However, you're very quick to dismiss out of hand the possibility that the government could make open source work. As I Navy veteran, I've seen first-hand the types of applications that the military uses, and they're not as bound to Windows as you suggest. In fact, it would be better for the military (and the government in general) to move to platform-independent applications whenever possible.
Training is also not an issue. The military is going to put their staff through IT training schools anyway, they could just as easily teach *nix as teach Windows.
Cost of hardware? Why would the cost of hardware be more? Linux does more on less hardware than Windows.
Support costs? Even if it goes up, I see it as a wash because the government isn't paying per-seat licensing fees and isn't spending resources doing software audits.
Windows is the best desktop OS? Again, a negligible point. Through most of the 80's, the Mac OS was the best desktop OS, but MS-DOS still beat it out because of the cost. All of the major desktop GUI's are good enough, I would say that arguing over the desktop interface is irrelevant.
I'll start with the biggest piece of ugliness about the military: the supply system that's in place.
Monies allocated to units are divided into multiple accounts, which must be completely depleted by fiscal year's end. If a unit has money carry over to Oct. 1st, they get less money than they were allocated the year before. It's an ugly, harsh, stupid way of doing things, but the military is just too big to allow for anything else, unless you want to add several thousand accountants to each branch of the military.
Actually, I know this is true because I was stationed at the Naval Air Station in Key West for 2 years. In order to spend the rest of the budget, the pilots would fly up to Maine to get fresh lobster for the officers' parties (in spite of the fact that Key West has lobster, too), or during the last week of the fiscal year, they'd put almost every plane in the air doing touch-and-go's, which BTW requires that you dump all of the fuel in the wings before you touch down on the runway; and they'd dump a LOT of fuel just to spend the money.
Getting back to IT, though... spending money on IT isn't hard. Just start turning over the computers every two years instead of every three years, and you can blow through a gratuitous amount of cash.
In the military, just like civilian life, there are a lot of people that go into IT because they believe it will land them a high paying job with little real work involved in getting or keeping their employment. Unfortunately, that motivation does little for learning much above the essentials.
True, but the military has its own training infrastructure, and therefore the ability to drive its stategic IT decisions. Start putting *nix questions in the advancement tests and people will learn it if they want to make rank. Also kick off an initiative to convert the most popular duty stations to *nix installations, and again you incentivize people to learn this stuff. A third way, and a way to get people to sign up for the special training, would be to hand out reenlistment bonuses to IT staff who pass *nix qualification tests.
Paying for the bonuses shouldn't bee too much of a problem, when you use the money that you used to pay to Microsoft for licensing.
You are aware that Apple's software has always been the loss-leader for it's hardware, right?
Loss leader? I seriously doubt that. According to Apple, Jaguar sold 100,000 copies the first weekend of its release. If you subtract 25% of the $129 for packaging, retail markup and whatnot, that's still a cool million Apple made in the first two days. For me, personally, that would mark the third time I've paid for OS X (the $15 for the public beta, the $129 for the initial release and now $129 for Jaguar).
And yes, a good number of copies are sold at a bundle price with hardware. But I seriously doubt that the contribution margin coming from those sales put the OS X division in the red. Remember, there wouldn't be ANY hardware sales without a good OS running on it, so you can't dismiss a computer sale as a profit for the hardware division only.
Look at Apple. Everyone knows that Apple has generous profit margins. However, they went out and bought their OS outright, and then spent another 4 years developing it before they offered a shrink-wrapped version. And the price they charge? $129. And that for an OS that serves 5% of the computer market.
Microsoft, OTOH, initially develops NT in partnership with IBM, so some of their costs are defrayed. Then they are the sole developer, but they have several releases, in addition to charging a per-seat license on for the server version, so they make up their development costs with each version. Now they are up to WinXP, which costs $300 for the professional version, which they are selling to 90% of the computer market. It should be obvious that MS is charging far, far more than they need to.
Also, keep in mind that most sales of Windows XP are preinstalled bundles on PC's, so who knows how much profit is made when you shell out the $300 for a shrink-wrapped copy.
I'm sorry, but when someone is making 85%+ margins AND shutting other companies out of entering the market, I don't know of a clearer definition of monopoly.
As a capitalist, I'd much rather see the market solve it's own problems. One way would certainly be for the government to seek out open source solutions as much as possible. Particularly the military; they already train their personnel on troubleshooting PC's, there's no reason they can't put more emphasis on Linux.
I just wouldn't want to see it issued as a directive that all departments must switch to Linux, because I'd hate to see Mac OS X get shut out.
Congratulations: you've shown you've read the liberal talking points about how to dismiss criticisms of Brock's book without knowing why I said what I said.
How do you disprove hearsay? "He said/she said" is very tough to disprove, and a lot of Brock's allegations fall into that category.
And by the way, I've seen liberal commentators come down just as hard on Brock. Show me some respected liberal journalists at respected news organizations who think that we should now take Brock seriously. I guarantee that it's a small enough group of people that they could fit in my coat closet with room to spare.
Face it, Brock is a confessed liar and opportunist. As a conservative, I now dismiss his early stuff, too, because the guy has ZERO credibility.
For more enlightenment, read David Brock's Blinded by the Right.
Read David Brock for enlightenment? The guy's an admitted liar!
So, was he lying then and telling the truth now, or was he telling the truth then and lying now? I personally think the latter. Maybe he lied both then AND now!
Brock is a controversial writer who needs to sell books. He hadn't had a best seller in a long time, so he hatches this plan to write a book the refutes all of his previous books. Instant best seller and it gets him back on all the talk shows.
I think what you probably meant to say was, "Read David Brock for some liberal warm fuzzies." But enlightenment? Please.