Publishers often refer to prohibited copying as ``piracy.'' In this way, they imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnaping and murdering the people on them. If you don't believe that illegal copying is just like kidnaping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word ``piracy'' to describe it. Neutral terms such as ``prohibited copying'' or ``unauthorized copying'' are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as ``sharing information with your neighbor.'
So everything is public domain? I find this rather suprising coming from RMS, since he's such a advocate of the GPL. So I guess he won't mind if i go ahead and strip out that gpl copyright stuff from that source i got and use it any way I please. If you don't believe in copyright thats fine, as long as you realize all the consequences.
I'm not denying that open source is less buggy, but always question the motivation of the company making the claims. Just because Reasoning's assertions fit your own neat world views doesn't mean that they are without bias or secondary motivation.
Err no, i could care less what reasoning's motivations are, only if his assertions are true. Hell for all I know Linus wrote linux because he thinks he can score more with the chicks. If Bill Gates yells "look out you're being shot at!" I could care less what his motivations are.
2) The OSS-given ability to (re)write software is not a de facto requirement to (re)write said software. It does not absolve the original programmers of their responsibilty to write non-crap
The original programmers responsibility is to produce non-crap by *Their* defenition, not yours. They are scratching *their* itch not yours. Sometimes the software they produce is valuable to others, sometimes not. Commercial software exists to scratch other peoples itches, maybe you should go there. Oh and if the commercial software "doesn't scratch your itch", then your screwed, since you can't just modify their code to your satisfaction.
The money isn't the app it's the services. Create a product and then provide support for it. You provide support and you will not lose your customer base. Nobody that sells software provides any support these days and they wonder why the business model crumbles.
exactly! and better yet make a really poor product so that you can get even more money in services. Or make half a product and then charge to complete it as a service. Or just make software and say the whole thing is a service. That way all software is a service, and your rich!
Wow the nation is run by a handfull of CEOs from the large corporations? That's quite a conspiracty theory. I submit to you that the judicial branch then is actually run be giant squirrels
I wonder if this commitment to Gnome from Sun could also be considered some sort of admission that Swing, despite years of research and development, is not (yet?) that adeguate to make a desktop environment.
There are a couple of desktop environments out there made with java, I don't know if Sun considerd them at all. I do have to admit though that this puts another nail in java's coffin, along with staroffice not being in java, outside of j2ee. I've been a big fan of Java for some time, but it really looks like sun is giving up on it for everything but J2EE. Sad really, java could be so much more.
Ripping off unique Apple designs is not just pathetic, it's inevitable. I'm glad someone still takes design chances with their hardware -- it comes out quite well very often.:)
Why is it that people always think it's other companies that rip off apple? Sorry, when I saw the apples titanium laptop, i thought Fujitsu lifebook. Just because apple makes something popular, doesn't mean they invented it.
Re:CNet Review - "Don't switch browsers"
on
Netscape 7.0 is Out
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Summary: We had high hopes for Netscape 7.0, but we're sorely disappointed, especially by the missing pop-up suppressor. There's no practical reason to switch from either IE or
This is the secret key to Netscape's success, if only it could have pop-up suppression, we would also have a borwer war. I can't tell you how many times my IE using buddies see me use galeon, and when they don't see pop-ups, they say, "That is so cool, i need that." Think about it AOL replaces IE with Netscape with pop-up suppression... bingo!
Not so at all. Red Hat is a Software company. They have created a lot of software that is OSS.
Yes they do produce some software, but the vast majority of the software in their product is somebody elses code. This is why their business model is good, they don't have to incur the cost of producing the product. It's a differnt business model if you produce software, incur the cost of making the product, then compete on even footing for service contracts with those who didn't have to incur the cost of producing that software.
Everyone knows there is a house advantage in the casinos. When you enter a casino, you're on private property, and thus have to play by their rules. If you don't like those rules, you can go to another casino whose rules you like. But good luck finding a casino that will let you cheat
It's even more difficult or impossible to find a casino that doesn't cheat(where the odds are tipped in their favor). The best way to get rich is not to go to a casino, but to own one. Because there are always notlack of suckers that will come in to give you their money.
Ehhh, yes... and baseball bats are primarily sporting equipment.
Both are frequently misused, in the case of accounting to the point where one wonders if if the de facto primary function still is what it was supposed to be.
Well lets clarify the situation. It's more then likely that the accounting department did do their job(show acurate information) for management then it's likely that the CFO, and possibly the CEO didn't want that info to get out, so they changed the financials. If the screw up was in the accounting dept. then they weren't doing their job, and management didn't really know the financial position of the company. This is unlikely though, there is no incentive for the controller(head of the accounting dept) to defraud his/her bosses, the controller isn't responsible for how money comes in or out, only that those are recorded acuratley. This is why you see CFO's being taken away in chains. So the purpose for accounting remains the same, it's just that there is a difference between what management sees, and what they want to do with that information.
Uh... this is what accounting is mostly about, AFAIK. Reduce the profits, pay less tax
Acounting's primary functions is to take a snapshot in time of the organizations financial position so that management can properly manage the organization.
Not trying to get insulting (its not intended to be) but the same seems to be true of food. The 'Orlando' guy said he went for a meal at a steak house on his holiday.. after he ordered some huge steak, the waitress gave him a plate and said he was welcome to eat some food from the buffet whilst he waited, as it was included in the price. Over here in the UK, that would normally mean some salad or pasta perhaps.. so he was pretty surprised to discover that the buffer in fact consisted of Steaks, Chicken and all that kind of stuff.. basically an entire meal in itself. Like I say, we don't really have anything like that over here.
Well you could very well get insulting, and it would be true. American drinks and meals aren't the only thing that's big and getting bigger. As an american I can say it's amazing how many americans are fat, this becomes real obvious when you travel the rest of the world. I came back from Europe, and the amount of fat people in the airport was real noticable. Most of the time I go out for food, I can hardly believe the quantities i'm served. I mean I could get 3 meals out of the serving sizes. I can only hope we don't export our terrible food habits to the rest of the world. Better yet we could import just about any other countries, and be better off.
However the problem of Free Riders tends to be orthogonal in well executed versions of the "give away razors" strategy. In well executed versions of this strategy, the business is uninterested if the market it has commoditized now has a low barrier to entry as long as there is still a significantly barrier to entry in the market for its complement.
This is why it is curious that Sun pumps money into Java. Sure they sell "razors", but their blades fit into other companies razors as well. IBM, HP, etc have got to love java, Sun pumps millions into it and they sell more hardware.
Yes but it's not their gold. It's the shareholders. I'm not sure if Bill has 51% of the shares, but if no the shareholders should remove management and replace them with managers that actaully work for their shareholders. Keeping this much money around is a sign of a poorly run company.
You say that like its news to the record labels. Six months after debut, when the total subscriptions is barly pushing three digits, they'll shut the service down and say "See no one wants to pay for their music downloads. The only reason Napster and the like were popular is that they were free.
And They'd be right. The Genie is out of the bottle and they know it, and are scared shitless. No wonder they run to hardware protection.
The only actor with the ability to put these costs back on balance sheets where they belong is the TV personality every American loves to hate - the government.
These things are known as externalities in economics circles. Another example of this is a company that puts up a building that many people see as a blot on the skyline. Anyway the upshot is that the companies don't truly bear all the costs of producing their product, some one else is bearing a cost in polution for example. One way that you can push a company to bear that cost is to not buy their products/services. If more people feel that way, eventaully solving those externalities will pay off for the comapnies in the additional business they would get.
I've been to queenstown, it sits in a valley of moutains. No doubt the rain rushes down the moutains and heads for the city. Maybe that would be good for a flooding movie, but no for LOTR.
Once the market cap gets under $80 million, the assets of the company are valued more than its valuation as a publically traded company (I believe VA has $83 million cash and securities)
I can't figure out why companies insist on spending every last dollar when its obvious that it isn't going to happen.
Well at that point you hope that the board of directors get together and can the CEO's ass. After all it's not the companies money, it's the shareholders. Much of the time though, the CEO is buddy buddy with the Majority share holder/holders, so it goes on to the bitter end. Anyway your barking up the wrong tree with this kind of financial analysis, not only are most slashdot readers uninterested in it, but many are out right hostile to anything about economics.
Again, return to the Physics teacher example. Lots of people in this country make a living teaching physics even though they don't own the laws of physics.
Yes lets return to this then. you are equating the laws of physics with information. This is incorrect. Again, the laws of physics existed long before there was any information about them. Someone created that information, that is what i'm talking about. If Bob studies physics, and makes a discovery, then Bob has information that no one else does, at that point the information is scarce, and Bob can choose to do what he wants with that information. He may ask for money from someone to share it with them, or he may just take the time and tell them at no cost to others. In the above example, I have shown you how information is scarce, and has value. When someone buys Micorosft windows, they make the decision that it is better to buy it, then to go make it themselves. Probably the right decision. It is in Microsoft's best interest to keep the source "secret" as you say, because it is an economic entity that exists in the market place. If Microsoft didn't act this way it would be punished by the market out of existience. But this also explains why Microsoft is able to charge at all, for if there where no scarcity, then people wouldn't pay so much for it.
If someone keeps a secret to themselves, then they have a monopoly on that information. And that is the point of asking someone to keep a secret, to keep the information as scarce as possible
But the rub is this: once it's been published, it's not scarce at all unless people conspire to make it so.
Unless you and your society can't read, then the information that has been pubished will still be quite scarce to them.
You can from scratch build libs that are compatible with windows, like wine as you say. Maybe infact windows isn't scarce at all, you are free to build one up from scratch in your own home. Maybe the real problem that people have with microsoft has nothing to do with scarcity percieved or otherwise, but is all about pricing.
Scarcity lies in the cost of *reproducing* materials, not in the cost of producing the first one.
Why? There are 3 people in a room, 2 shoot each other dead. 1 person is left that can relay information to others that about what happened in that room that cannot be retrieved in another way. Now depending on the demand for that information, we will get a price for that scarce information. A real world example is perhaps the Kennedy assasination. There are perhaps only a few people who have certain information about the happenings on that day, and they choose to keep it scarse.
Software is a bit more complex an analogy, but ultimately there are few things in software that are new under the sun. When you "buy" a piece of software, you aren't paying for the algorithms and UI widgets, you're paying for the collection of them, and the people that wrote it.
As you say, there isn't anything really new in software, you are in fact able to code up your own windows 2000 equivalent in your basement if you want to, just like you can start your own research of physics from scratch. The costs to make a windows 2000 clone on your own in your own basement, is very high indeed, most people see that cost as much higher than buying it. From this example, I don't see your problem, as long as it's possible for someone to do something themselves irregardless of cost, then there is no scarcity.
You're paying for the medium (textbooks) and support (professors).
Yes you are paying for the books, and some of the cost is in the medium, but there is also a reflection in the price of the book for the individual(s) authors scarce information. Same for the professors salary, his compensations is directly related to the scarcity of his/her knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't believe that illegal copying is just like kidnaping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word ``piracy'' to describe it. Neutral terms such as ``prohibited copying'' or ``unauthorized copying'' are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as ``sharing information with your neighbor.'
So everything is public domain? I find this rather suprising coming from RMS, since he's such a advocate of the GPL. So I guess he won't mind if i go ahead and strip out that gpl copyright stuff from that source i got and use it any way I please. If you don't believe in copyright thats fine, as long as you realize all the consequences.
Err no, i could care less what reasoning's motivations are, only if his assertions are true. Hell for all I know Linus wrote linux because he thinks he can score more with the chicks. If Bill Gates yells "look out you're being shot at!" I could care less what his motivations are.
The original programmers responsibility is to produce non-crap by *Their* defenition, not yours. They are scratching *their* itch not yours. Sometimes the software they produce is valuable to others, sometimes not. Commercial software exists to scratch other peoples itches, maybe you should go there. Oh and if the commercial software "doesn't scratch your itch", then your screwed, since you can't just modify their code to your satisfaction.
exactly! and better yet make a really poor product so that you can get even more money in services. Or make half a product and then charge to complete it as a service. Or just make software and say the whole thing is a service. That way all software is a service, and your rich!
Wow the nation is run by a handfull of CEOs from the large corporations? That's quite a conspiracty theory. I submit to you that the judicial branch then is actually run be giant squirrels
There are a couple of desktop environments out there made with java, I don't know if Sun considerd them at all. I do have to admit though that this puts another nail in java's coffin, along with staroffice not being in java, outside of j2ee. I've been a big fan of Java for some time, but it really looks like sun is giving up on it for everything but J2EE. Sad really, java could be so much more.
Why is it that people always think it's other companies that rip off apple? Sorry, when I saw the apples titanium laptop, i thought Fujitsu lifebook. Just because apple makes something popular, doesn't mean they invented it.
We had high hopes for Netscape 7.0, but we're sorely disappointed, especially by the missing pop-up suppressor. There's no practical reason to switch from either IE or
This is the secret key to Netscape's success, if only it could have pop-up suppression, we would also have a borwer war. I can't tell you how many times my IE using buddies see me use galeon, and when they don't see pop-ups, they say, "That is so cool, i need that." Think about it AOL replaces IE with Netscape with pop-up suppression... bingo!
Yes they do produce some software, but the vast majority of the software in their product is somebody elses code. This is why their business model is good, they don't have to incur the cost of producing the product. It's a differnt business model if you produce software, incur the cost of making the product, then compete on even footing for service contracts with those who didn't have to incur the cost of producing that software.
Red hat isn't a software company, they take software other people make and bundle it together, and market it. Red hat is a Marketing company.
It's even more difficult or impossible to find a casino that doesn't cheat(where the odds are tipped in their favor). The best way to get rich is not to go to a casino, but to own one. Because there are always notlack of suckers that will come in to give you their money.
Well lets clarify the situation. It's more then likely that the accounting department did do their job(show acurate information) for management then it's likely that the CFO, and possibly the CEO didn't want that info to get out, so they changed the financials. If the screw up was in the accounting dept. then they weren't doing their job, and management didn't really know the financial position of the company. This is unlikely though, there is no incentive for the controller(head of the accounting dept) to defraud his/her bosses, the controller isn't responsible for how money comes in or out, only that those are recorded acuratley. This is why you see CFO's being taken away in chains. So the purpose for accounting remains the same, it's just that there is a difference between what management sees, and what they want to do with that information.
Acounting's primary functions is to take a snapshot in time of the organizations financial position so that management can properly manage the organization.
Well you could very well get insulting, and it would be true. American drinks and meals aren't the only thing that's big and getting bigger. As an american I can say it's amazing how many americans are fat, this becomes real obvious when you travel the rest of the world. I came back from Europe, and the amount of fat people in the airport was real noticable. Most of the time I go out for food, I can hardly believe the quantities i'm served. I mean I could get 3 meals out of the serving sizes. I can only hope we don't export our terrible food habits to the rest of the world. Better yet we could import just about any other countries, and be better off.
This is why it is curious that Sun pumps money into Java. Sure they sell "razors", but their blades fit into other companies razors as well. IBM, HP, etc have got to love java, Sun pumps millions into it and they sell more hardware.
Yes but it's not their gold. It's the shareholders. I'm not sure if Bill has 51% of the shares, but if no the shareholders should remove management and replace them with managers that actaully work for their shareholders. Keeping this much money around is a sign of a poorly run company.
And They'd be right. The Genie is out of the bottle and they know it, and are scared shitless. No wonder they run to hardware protection.
The only actor with the ability to put these costs back on balance sheets where they belong is the TV personality every American loves to hate - the government.
These things are known as externalities in economics circles. Another example of this is a company that puts up a building that many people see as a blot on the skyline. Anyway the upshot is that the companies don't truly bear all the costs of producing their product, some one else is bearing a cost in polution for example. One way that you can push a company to bear that cost is to not buy their products/services. If more people feel that way, eventaully solving those externalities will pay off for the comapnies in the additional business they would get.
I've been to queenstown, it sits in a valley of moutains. No doubt the rain rushes down the moutains and heads for the city. Maybe that would be good for a flooding movie, but no for LOTR.
I can't figure out why companies insist on spending every last dollar when its obvious that it isn't going to happen.
Well at that point you hope that the board of directors get together and can the CEO's ass. After all it's not the companies money, it's the shareholders. Much of the time though, the CEO is buddy buddy with the Majority share holder/holders, so it goes on to the bitter end. Anyway your barking up the wrong tree with this kind of financial analysis, not only are most slashdot readers uninterested in it, but many are out right hostile to anything about economics.
Yes lets return to this then. you are equating the laws of physics with information. This is incorrect. Again, the laws of physics existed long before there was any information about them. Someone created that information, that is what i'm talking about. If Bob studies physics, and makes a discovery, then Bob has information that no one else does, at that point the information is scarce, and Bob can choose to do what he wants with that information. He may ask for money from someone to share it with them, or he may just take the time and tell them at no cost to others. In the above example, I have shown you how information is scarce, and has value. When someone buys Micorosft windows, they make the decision that it is better to buy it, then to go make it themselves. Probably the right decision. It is in Microsoft's best interest to keep the source "secret" as you say, because it is an economic entity that exists in the market place. If Microsoft didn't act this way it would be punished by the market out of existience. But this also explains why Microsoft is able to charge at all, for if there where no scarcity, then people wouldn't pay so much for it.
Thanks for the discussion
If someone keeps a secret to themselves, then they have a monopoly on that information. And that is the point of asking someone to keep a secret, to keep the information as scarce as possible
But the rub is this: once it's been published, it's not scarce at all unless people conspire to make it so.
Unless you and your society can't read, then the information that has been pubished will still be quite scarce to them.
You can from scratch build libs that are compatible with windows, like wine as you say. Maybe infact windows isn't scarce at all, you are free to build one up from scratch in your own home. Maybe the real problem that people have with microsoft has nothing to do with scarcity percieved or otherwise, but is all about pricing.
Why? There are 3 people in a room, 2 shoot each other dead. 1 person is left that can relay information to others that about what happened in that room that cannot be retrieved in another way. Now depending on the demand for that information, we will get a price for that scarce information. A real world example is perhaps the Kennedy assasination. There are perhaps only a few people who have certain information about the happenings on that day, and they choose to keep it scarse.
As you say, there isn't anything really new in software, you are in fact able to code up your own windows 2000 equivalent in your basement if you want to, just like you can start your own research of physics from scratch. The costs to make a windows 2000 clone on your own in your own basement, is very high indeed, most people see that cost as much higher than buying it. From this example, I don't see your problem, as long as it's possible for someone to do something themselves irregardless of cost, then there is no scarcity.
Yes you are paying for the books, and some of the cost is in the medium, but there is also a reflection in the price of the book for the individual(s) authors scarce information. Same for the professors salary, his compensations is directly related to the scarcity of his/her knowledge.