Because of the global market. The dollar has plummeted, so that $20 dollars doesn't buy you what it used to. Plus inflation. The companies still want the same 'real terms' profit margins.
The real crux of this matter is that he's not interested in being right. Merely making a profit by selling software. The sales figures on the games he's selling (and the other software) say he's doing a good job on the assumptions he's making. No money spent on DRM, and sales in excess of what some 'big label' software achieves. Could he make an extra few sales by using DRM? Perhaps. Would he lose some? Definitely (I'd be one; I don't buy many games these days, mostly due to DRM. No Bioshock for me, and no I've not pirated. Just won't buy anything that crippled, despite it looking like a great product from the demo). Would it return more money than the DRM cost? Probably not. Would it affect good will? Massive negative hit.
So, right or wrong, he does exactly what businesses are supposed to do. Pay staff, make a product and make a profit. His balance sheet shows his decision to be a viable strategy, so he's happy with that. A very honourable and enlightened way to do business. Just like it always used to be done, with a gentleman's agreement.
I fear you fail to understand the whole point. MS have put a whole layer of software that does NOTHING for the user at all. Absolutely nothing. It is prone to error, and causes more resource usage. There have been times that my legally bought DVDs have failed to play on my windows box, simply because the DRM in the video driver threw a fit. Had to reinstall windows to make it go away.
Now, I can afford to pay for content, and I do pay for content. Quite a bit of content actually. But when you get treated like a child, or a potential criminal, and handed something that may cease to work at any point (some of my iTunes tracks have ceased to work over various upgrades) for no other reason than it may save the vendor a little money (though they can't prove it. I CAN prove cost to me, and when you multiply that up, you may find that the consumers are spending millions on corruption on DRM). So, put simply, unless there is no other way to obtain something, I will not accept something DRM encoded. It is the introduction of a fail point for no other reason than an arbitrary decision by vendors.
You know what? For millennia, people have treated each other fairly. There has been a lot of give and take, some 'acceptable losses' for doing business (like the money a company doesn't see when a book is sold on second hand, or loaned to a friend). And sometimes give by the employees, or even customers who help to keep a company afloat through rough times. Only in the last 10 years or so have these millennia of traditions been thrown completely out the window by companies that want to control every last transaction, with no concept of fair play or spirit of the agreement. The only thing that is recognised now is money. A number. Nothing else. So, when the companies set the 'game', they still expect the customer to play by the old rules, where the client can help to prop up an ailing business model. In fact (c.f. RIAA), they believe they can FORCE the customer (or even someone who has nothing to do with their product, apart from the fact they say they do, and serve them with a legal case). And honestly, they expect people to play fair back?
Now, you get some companies (hello Stardock) who release games with NO DRM. And guess what? They get great sales too.. And as much (or little) piracy as anyone else. They've not been driven out of business by the piracy that games companies keep saying would put them out of business if they didn't have DRM built into the system. They play fair. And guess what? In the main part, people play fair with them. Those very few that don't are chalked up to "Acceptable loss", and probably wouldn't have bought the game in the first place. Or maybe they're a bunch of low earners who actually pooled cash to buy a game between them.. Technically (and actually) infringement, but it's a sale where otherwise there would have been none. A positive on the financial balance sheet, a minus on the technical legality. Speaking as a businessman (yes, I do run a business), the sane thing to do is watch the balance sheet and turn a blind eye to the 'casual' copy. But come down extremely hard on someone who tries to make a business out of pirating your stuff..
I think one of the things the GP poster was referring to was to let people have the freedom to choose to be honourable. If you don't, what's honour and fairness? By giving the freedom to be honourable, you nurture that. By denying it the ability to express itself, you force lesser outcomes. What a surprise.
Absolutely. We all make a perfect copy of the master tape, then erase every other copy of the track in existence (and also the memories that people have of how the track may be reproduced). That is the definition of stealing music.
Except, as you already noted, that if you stick that kind of price tag on it, you'll find that the majority of the net is leeches. And you can't have that high a leech to provider ratio and actually distribute anything. By the time you'd managed to download from the hundred seeds, you'll have probably provided 30 or 40 distros worth of material. Maybe more. That would soon add up to a not-so-trivial amount, meaning that people would soon be stopping acting as seeds. This would mean the availability may just not be there at all after the initial seeds get tired of funding 100x download volume in upload, just to make sure there's enough availability on future seeds. Which would kill p2p, putting all the bandwidth cost back to providers (such as Linux distros, Open Office, so on, so forth), which really could spend the cash on much better things.
P2P relies on a good portion of the people engaged in the share not being leeches, or it all falls over.
Bullying leads to depression.. When you're really (clinically) depressed, however wise you may have been at the start, getting off the big merry go round seems like a very inviting choice. Really, I think the abusers in this case should certainly be hit by the child abuse laws at the very minimum, plus stalking laws..
A new law though? I'm not so sure it would be necessary.. Just use the existing ones out there. New laws won't actually fix anything though. You'll just end up with more criminals. The only way to weed it out is to make it socially unacceptable to behave the way the bullies did.. At the moment, it's just fine to yell and scream, and put people down, throw emotional abuse at them, and generally make them miserable (c.f. Jerry Springer et. al). While it persists in being a form of entertainment, there'll still be loads of people that persist in behaving that way, and calling it 'just for fun', or 'a bit of a laugh'.
Shift the message to "You find that funny, and we'll all consider you cat-lady strange", then we may see the behavior change. Creating a law is merely trying to cap the symptom, rather than address the cause. Recourse to law really isn't going to help.
Actually, worse: It lets you think of one hypothetical way of skinning a feline, and block anyone else from skinning any quadruped. Even if you've not actually demonstrated that your way of skinning the quadruped will indeed work (or even could work).
Wrong. Ever been to China? I was there last year.. And I'll say something, the amount of money that's going into commerce and construction is astounding. I've never seen anything like it in the West. Lots of venture capital is pointed at China, simply because the cost to start something up is about 20% of setting it up in the US (and without a lot of the legal constraint as well, as an added bonus). Given that you see projects of bright ideas, some of which fail, some of which make millions.. Given a set budget, would you prefer to place bets on 10 of these, or 50 (given that the success is about even wherever the startup is performed, due to global nature of the project). I'll bet on the 50 please. Five times the likely payoff, and the failures don't really hurt that much, as you don't gamble an awful lot out there. VC is incredibly easy to find out in China.
Depends where you are. Where I am (Bristol), there's a lot of this about. And I don't read the news papers much (I check world news though). I note you mention statistics. And I'd politely like to remind you that usage of statistics can point to say whatever you want. Much like the stats used to justify Speed Cameras. I'm 38, and can hear the Mosquito. It's irritating, yes, but not moreso than I find the thumping beats in some shops that I now refuse to shop in. By being active in the communities in the area I live in, and around, I have noticed a lot more violent behaviour in the younger demographic. Significantly more so. The real solution to this would be to chuck the area of the 'human rights' laws that say "ooo.. Child. Can't touch.. Naughty.. No!" when they throw abuse at you (and threaten to knife you), and let people give them a solid clip round the ear, as used to happen a few decades back. That is nicely targetted, thank you very much. It would deal with the indiscriminate nature of the Mosquito. However, every law we have says that if you target someone who's threatening you, you are extremely likely to be picked on legally (a granny in court of swatting a kid who was vandalising a war memorial; she's on charges of assault. People who hit back to stop assaults/burglaries etc. end up in court for assault charges. A woman was assaulted in broad daylight on a street (not empty), and nobody stopped, as almost everyone is afraid of getting either stabbed, or up on charges in court). If you think it's only stories, about five years ago, a mate of mine was stabbed and killed for intervening in a group of kids that were trying to steal a mobile from a young gal. Friends of mine in the police force locally are really beginning to feel the crunch of it. No matter what the statistics say, hearing them talk of how the job's changed over the last few decades is scary. I'm with the GP poster on this.
I was sysadmin for the Ad company that had the Microsoft account in the UK. One of the things I was asked was 'Will it run inside these specs', which I think was 2MB RAM, and not much disk at all.. The answer I gave was that yes it would, if you left it to boot up for a good 10 minutes, and didn't want to run any applications on top of it. Or install anything else either. The resounding answer to that was "Great, we CAN advertise that it'll run on those specs". Even if I point blank told them it'd be useless, and to never advocate running it like that. The point is that Advertising is all about pushing how far you can bend the truth (or lack of it) without crossing the line of blatant lying that'll get you sued or fined. The "Vista Ready" sticker is an advertising token as much as anything. Yes, you can install Vista on it. Yes, it'll run Vista. Doesn't say anything about doing anything else with it (hey, it never said it'd run the latest greatest game, or even load your word processor!).
An interesting addendum to this argument is reported here on The Register. Essentially, the ISPs are saying to the Copyright Cartels "OK, We'll randomly pull people off the net. However, when we get it wrong, they will sue. And for lots. If you're willing to foot the bill for legals costs, AND settlements when it goes wrong, then we have a deal.".
Once the Copyright Cartels realise that they are going to have to deal with the realities of their situation (and spend money), methinks they'll think twice. If not, I wonder how many likely looking bits of music and video will be doing the rounds.. And how many of those will NOT be copyright.. And once accounts are pulled, how fast the coffers of the Cartels start emptying until they scream "Enough", and put everything back as it once was.
I played games on a computer 30 years ago.. And still play now.. Interestingly, Nintendo noticed that there was a tendancy for companies to market to the under 25 market.. And chose to open up the Wii to the older population segment.. And it seems to be doing rather well for that..
Think you've just explained things away yourself there in asking if people want to switch because the competition is crap or whether they want to pick a superior system?
By moving to a superior system, you're basically saying that comparatively (setting the baseline of judgement as the system you're evaluating), the system you're upgrading from IS crap. Comparatively.
If both camps go the way they are heading at the moment, MS will shortly provide something that you can't change a system fan on without re-purchasing new license, while adding bloat and shine, and only letting you play a valid movie from your latest HD drive if you have the latest monitor with the latest variant of hardware DRM built in (which you'll need to buy another license of Windows for, as changing a monitor means you're not using your original computer anymore). Complete overstatement, I know, but you get the picture of 'following the trend' to it's extreme.
Linux on the other hand seems to be heading towards being far more user friendly, having things just working out of the box. It'll probably not have all the small features on it that Windows has, and one user in several hundred thousand may find useful on the odd Tuesday when the moon's blue. But it'll be highly functional to do what most people find suitable and useful (if you want better, you'll either buy the commercial apps if they get ported, or pay large amounts of money to buy the bigger OSes).
Really though, I don't want it to be a choice of picking any evils. Optimum would be an ecosystem of OSes, each with it's strengths, communicating freely on an agreed set of protocols. You pick the one that suits your needs, and just get on with life. All choices are from good systems, just most of them aren't suitable for the task you want to do.
Actually, they're not telling anyone where to go.. Instead they're making sure they control as much of the energy supply as they can (a significant amount), and work with as great a versatility as they can.
Think the US a hundred or so years ago. Large amounts of lawlessness, no real restrictions on doing things, people were trodden on in the path to making a fast buck..
Part of that shady history meant that people could copy ideas, and make them better, with no real downside (patents? Copyright? Pfft!) and certainly no cost.
Russia has very little right now apart from large amounts of raw reserves, and a hell of a lot of top notch talent.
Russia doesn't need to tell anyone where to go.. The politicians are largely scared because there is nothing they can do against the new, fiscally aware Russia. Sanctions won't work (it controls energy to too many neighbouring countries, and has a significant stake in Europe), it's not signed up to all the trade treaties, so they don't really apply.. Legal pounding won't work. And invasion (as I've seen many advocate) simply won't happen because escalation to nuclear is likely and everyone loses.
For the moment, they're happy using their botnet to make money. Which means leaving the 'host' economies well alone, and hoping they prosper, as like any parasite, they get most gains from a healthy host.
Really upset them to the point of wanting to lash out, and I have the nasty suspicion they could do some real damage to completely unexpected areas.. Enough to wipe out percentiles from the stock markets.
Which is probably the large reason nobody's going in heavy handed. At the moment the 'status quo' still exists. I'd really hate to see this get nasty.
You can happily copyright the code, but shouldn't be able to patent it. The physical object would still be patented. You don't violate the patent on the object just by typing the code, or even executing it. You violate the patent by actually having the robot arm create the final object. You could run the code to your heart's content if it were operating in 'test' without creating the final object without violating the patent.
I'd reccommend getting a Yuan account too. And yes, they still know where you come from. Having a dollar account and a Yen account just means you have money in other currencies not tied to the fluctuations of your own homeland's rises and falls. The transactions you make will still originate in country you live (unless you travel, and have bank accounts actually in those countries). So, even if I paid from a dollar account for some music from the store (sold in dollar prices) they would not allow the transaction to complete, as it was initiated from somewhere outside the region they feel like selling at that price to.
Which is why over here in the UK, the phrase "Rip Off Britain" is used a lot; even though quite a few of us these days have accounts in different currencies, the big companies still refuse to sell to us at international rates. For example, shop on Adobe, check out the prices. You go to the US store, and a product costs, say, $99. That's fair enough. Go straight to the UK store, and the price is approximately £115, which at current rates is twice the amount. Now, because a transaction is commenced in the UK, they refuse to sell to you at the $99 rate. Even if you pay in dollars right the way through. Nope, because you're in a different area of the world, it costs over twice as much. Zero packaging, or transmission fees. Nothing extra to pay (well, perhaps 17.5% VAT, which doesn't amount to the 120% extra levy charged).
I get the sneaky suspicion that Amazon will do just the same when they open the international stores. And it's beginning to irk me. The companies offshore jobs to get the most man time they can for the money (by paying peanuts), yet refuse to let the customer purchase from the cheapest country to get the greatest amount of product for the money (because that would be unethical, honest, and now illegal!).
Bad, no.. Interesting.. Yes.. Worrisome, most certainly. Out of all the techs we've yet produced as a race, all of them (with the possible exception of the nascent self-replicating nanotechnology field) have been firmly controlled by humanity. Biotech on the other hand, we create something, and when it leaves (and sometimes before it leaves) the 'home', it gets all grown up, with the possibility of getting a serious attitude of it's own and some seriously big boots to come back kicking with. With all our machines, you turn off the power, and they're useless. Starve them of fuel, and they stop. With something living we don't have the 'off switch'. Even if we do at the time it's released, it only takes a few organisms to be 'faulty' and not respond to the 'off'. So, no.. It's not bad. It's just something that we have to be far more careful of than we do the digital. If digital is broken, the worst that happens is that money is lost, and people get miserable (OK, possibly VERY miserable). If Biotech gets 'Broken', lots of people can die. Rapidly.
It seems more and more that the Law is heading towards penalizing anyone that employs some knowledge in the technical arena that worries people who don't understand it. The end result is that people in the countries where the laws preventing basic (and in some cases slightly cavalier) activities becomes a criminal offense, thus dissuading a large amount of the indigenous populace from testing the limits themselves (without doing hard time/losing the shirt). Net effect: Foreign countries that are immune from prosecution by the Law of the Land have a huge advantage, as no well meaning "White Hat" can help a company shore up its defences. There is no adaptation and evolution of the security mechanisms. If some group then decides en masse to perform some disruption, the security is far less than it ever should be (i.e. non-existent). Resulting in huge damage to the infrastructure (possibly unrecoverable).
Not to say this is new behaviour; back in the Medieval period, distinctly unpleasant lords would 'shoot the messenger' when soldiers disagreed with their defence arrangements. However, historically, the bloodlines of these particular lords were thinned out as their defences were overwhelmed in battle and they were slaughtered.
Not that I'm making any predictions, I just think it's an interesting historical trend.
Should be Research. Knowing how to get the right answers (and not just trusting to an "I feel lucky" google run), or find the right information. Once you know where to find the latest information, coupled with the theoretical knowledge you've gained through your Uni years, you'll find that you're able to keep current (or at the bleeding edge) of your chosen path, once you've tinkered about with various roles in "The Real World", and found one that fits you.
May be a little put off by this. After all, a lot of corporate types just love to travel with their laptops, as they've got all kinds of presentations on there. Some of which are treated as commercial secrets. Yes, it's a false sense of security, but a lot of the non-IT people are happier if they have their false sense of security (when it doesn't hurt the real picture), but this seems to shout loud and clear that business travellers shouldn't bring Laptops to the states. You just know the obstreperous security staff on the boring stretch are going to pull you over just to relieve the boredom, and go through your laptop, just because they can. This is going to put a crimp in your travel times (possibly miss your connection if they're actually feeling like a good old look through to see what's there). You then have your commercial secrets out in the open with someone who definitely isn't going to be held by any NDA. Whether it's a valid worry or not, it's enough to make people with a smattering of tech knowledge and a fair amount of business acumen think twice about taking anything mobile to the states (no pre-made presentations on a machine, no great demos that are tried and working on a particular platform that your clients don't YET have, so on, so forth). Net effect? The government can pat themselves on the back for riding roughshod over and claiming their abilities overriding politeness and fair conduct. And something that'll help chill overseas investment and the flow of commerce into the States. At exactly the time that all the trade that can be drummed up is needed..
Engineering didn't matter, because, hell.. Once one person started using the wheel, everyone did, so what was the advantage in anyone having it? Though really, it's more like the public transport system. By rights, it should be cheaper and more efficient if everyone used the mass transit system, and we all hopped on busses and trains run by large commercial entities with a monopoly on all transport.
Reality, on the other hand doesn't quite work that way. There are a lot of places that will simply want their own stuff (hey, you control your building and your servers a lot more closely than putting them in a big datacenter, and hey.. What about when your building loses external network connections?). The world is a diverse place with a lot of different cases. And any company that trusts their lifeblood to another (storing in one datacenter) trusts a little more than they really should.
The IT department, even in the world of datacenters, will still be there. Same as facilities departments, same as every other department, just the role may shift a little.
Hang on a sec.. This would be the same 2007 that Oil hit an all time high, a credit crunch of such epic proportions that it's hitting the world wide banking system to the point that Governments are having to bail out financial institutions.. People are losing houses and jobs.. Economies are looking shaky, and unemployment is starting to creep up in a rather scary fashion.. And they blithely put it down to piracy and competition from other entertainments. Don't you think that maybe.. Just maybe.. The fact that people don't have the money to spend on fripperies, and are actually worried about their ability to keep roof over head is also a factor in this?
The problem with the subscription model is persuading everyone that they need to keep subscribing. People with PCs that don't connect to the net. How do you enforce subscription? Time it out and say "Hey, you're out of time, please call microsoft with your credit card details to enable you to use your PC again"?. Even those net connected are going to get a little antsy with the messages that they have to keep paying to keep using something they consider they've already bought as part of their PC purchase in the first place. Given that in Europe, people are already getting itchy feet, and starting to migrate to alternate operating systems, or at least making greater use of them, MS is already under pressure not to upset too many people much more than it already has if they want them to keep buying.
Oh, and as an aside, you probably downloaded Slackware in late '93, not '92, as Slackware did their first release in '93.. I seem to remember Linus releasing the kernel in '93.. As that's when we started tinkering round with it at the Uni I was studying at then..
Just my opinion though.. Subscription may indeed be MS' panacea.. Though personally, I'd find it way too much of a risk (governments are currently shying away from reliance on MS as it puts too much power in the hands of a commercial entity.. What are they going to do when they're told "Pay us a tithe yearly, or ELSE!"?).
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Because of the global market. The dollar has plummeted, so that $20 dollars doesn't buy you what it used to. Plus inflation.
The companies still want the same 'real terms' profit margins.
The real crux of this matter is that he's not interested in being right. Merely making a profit by selling software.
The sales figures on the games he's selling (and the other software) say he's doing a good job on the assumptions he's making. No money spent on DRM, and sales in excess of what some 'big label' software achieves.
Could he make an extra few sales by using DRM? Perhaps. Would he lose some? Definitely (I'd be one; I don't buy many games these days, mostly due to DRM. No Bioshock for me, and no I've not pirated. Just won't buy anything that crippled, despite it looking like a great product from the demo). Would it return more money than the DRM cost?
Probably not. Would it affect good will? Massive negative hit.
So, right or wrong, he does exactly what businesses are supposed to do. Pay staff, make a product and make a profit. His balance sheet shows his decision to be a viable strategy, so he's happy with that. A very honourable and enlightened way to do business. Just like it always used to be done, with a gentleman's agreement.
I fear you fail to understand the whole point.
MS have put a whole layer of software that does NOTHING for the user at all. Absolutely nothing.
It is prone to error, and causes more resource usage.
There have been times that my legally bought DVDs have failed to play on my windows box, simply because the DRM in the video driver threw a fit. Had to reinstall windows to make it go away.
Now, I can afford to pay for content, and I do pay for content. Quite a bit of content actually.
But when you get treated like a child, or a potential criminal, and handed something that may cease to work at any point (some of my iTunes tracks have ceased to work over various upgrades) for no other reason than it may save the vendor a little money (though they can't prove it. I CAN prove cost to me, and when you multiply that up, you may find that the consumers are spending millions on corruption on DRM). So, put simply, unless there is no other way to obtain something, I will not accept something DRM encoded. It is the introduction of a fail point for no other reason than an arbitrary decision by vendors.
You know what? For millennia, people have treated each other fairly. There has been a lot of give and take, some 'acceptable losses' for doing business (like the money a company doesn't see when a book is sold on second hand, or loaned to a friend). And sometimes give by the employees, or even customers who help to keep a company afloat through rough times.
Only in the last 10 years or so have these millennia of traditions been thrown completely out the window by companies that want to control every last transaction, with no concept of fair play or spirit of the agreement.
The only thing that is recognised now is money. A number. Nothing else.
So, when the companies set the 'game', they still expect the customer to play by the old rules, where the client can help to prop up an ailing business model. In fact (c.f. RIAA), they believe they can FORCE the customer (or even someone who has nothing to do with their product, apart from the fact they say they do, and serve them with a legal case).
And honestly, they expect people to play fair back?
Now, you get some companies (hello Stardock) who release games with NO DRM. And guess what? They get great sales too.. And as much (or little) piracy as anyone else. They've not been driven out of business by the piracy that games companies keep saying would put them out of business if they didn't have DRM built into the system.
They play fair. And guess what? In the main part, people play fair with them. Those very few that don't are chalked up to "Acceptable loss", and probably wouldn't have bought the game in the first place. Or maybe they're a bunch of low earners who actually pooled cash to buy a game between them.. Technically (and actually) infringement, but it's a sale where otherwise there would have been none. A positive on the financial balance sheet, a minus on the technical legality. Speaking as a businessman (yes, I do run a business), the sane thing to do is watch the balance sheet and turn a blind eye to the 'casual' copy. But come down extremely hard on someone who tries to make a business out of pirating your stuff..
I think one of the things the GP poster was referring to was to let people have the freedom to choose to be honourable. If you don't, what's honour and fairness? By giving the freedom to be honourable, you nurture that.
By denying it the ability to express itself, you force lesser outcomes. What a surprise.
Absolutely. We all make a perfect copy of the master tape, then erase every other copy of the track in existence (and also the memories that people have of how the track may be reproduced).
That is the definition of stealing music.
Except, as you already noted, that if you stick that kind of price tag on it, you'll find that the majority of the net is leeches. And you can't have that high a leech to provider ratio and actually distribute anything.
By the time you'd managed to download from the hundred seeds, you'll have probably provided 30 or 40 distros worth of material. Maybe more. That would soon add up to a not-so-trivial amount, meaning that people would soon be stopping acting as seeds. This would mean the availability may just not be there at all after the initial seeds get tired of funding 100x download volume in upload, just to make sure there's enough availability on future seeds. Which would kill p2p, putting all the bandwidth cost back to providers (such as Linux distros, Open Office, so on, so forth), which really could spend the cash on much better things.
P2P relies on a good portion of the people engaged in the share not being leeches, or it all falls over.
Hmmm.. Just like Windows 3.11!
Bullying leads to depression.. When you're really (clinically) depressed, however wise you may have been at the start, getting off the big merry go round seems like a very inviting choice.
Really, I think the abusers in this case should certainly be hit by the child abuse laws at the very minimum, plus stalking laws..
A new law though? I'm not so sure it would be necessary.. Just use the existing ones out there. New laws won't actually fix anything though. You'll just end up with more criminals. The only way to weed it out is to make it socially unacceptable to behave the way the bullies did.. At the moment, it's just fine to yell and scream, and put people down, throw emotional abuse at them, and generally make them miserable (c.f. Jerry Springer et. al). While it persists in being a form of entertainment, there'll still be loads of people that persist in behaving that way, and calling it 'just for fun', or 'a bit of a laugh'.
Shift the message to "You find that funny, and we'll all consider you cat-lady strange", then we may see the behavior change. Creating a law is merely trying to cap the symptom, rather than address the cause. Recourse to law really isn't going to help.
Actually, worse: It lets you think of one hypothetical way of skinning a feline, and block anyone else from skinning any quadruped. Even if you've not actually demonstrated that your way of skinning the quadruped will indeed work (or even could work).
Wrong. Ever been to China? I was there last year.. And I'll say something, the amount of money that's going into commerce and construction is astounding. I've never seen anything like it in the West.
Lots of venture capital is pointed at China, simply because the cost to start something up is about 20% of setting it up in the US (and without a lot of the legal constraint as well, as an added bonus). Given that you see projects of bright ideas, some of which fail, some of which make millions.. Given a set budget, would you prefer to place bets on 10 of these, or 50 (given that the success is about even wherever the startup is performed, due to global nature of the project).
I'll bet on the 50 please. Five times the likely payoff, and the failures don't really hurt that much, as you don't gamble an awful lot out there.
VC is incredibly easy to find out in China.
Depends where you are. Where I am (Bristol), there's a lot of this about. And I don't read the news papers much (I check world news though).
I note you mention statistics. And I'd politely like to remind you that usage of statistics can point to say whatever you want. Much like the stats used to justify Speed Cameras.
I'm 38, and can hear the Mosquito. It's irritating, yes, but not moreso than I find the thumping beats in some shops that I now refuse to shop in.
By being active in the communities in the area I live in, and around, I have noticed a lot more violent behaviour in the younger demographic. Significantly more so.
The real solution to this would be to chuck the area of the 'human rights' laws that say "ooo.. Child. Can't touch.. Naughty.. No!" when they throw abuse at you (and threaten to knife you), and let people give them a solid clip round the ear, as used to happen a few decades back.
That is nicely targetted, thank you very much. It would deal with the indiscriminate nature of the Mosquito.
However, every law we have says that if you target someone who's threatening you, you are extremely likely to be picked on legally (a granny in court of swatting a kid who was vandalising a war memorial; she's on charges of assault. People who hit back to stop assaults/burglaries etc. end up in court for assault charges. A woman was assaulted in broad daylight on a street (not empty), and nobody stopped, as almost everyone is afraid of getting either stabbed, or up on charges in court).
If you think it's only stories, about five years ago, a mate of mine was stabbed and killed for intervening in a group of kids that were trying to steal a mobile from a young gal.
Friends of mine in the police force locally are really beginning to feel the crunch of it. No matter what the statistics say, hearing them talk of how the job's changed over the last few decades is scary.
I'm with the GP poster on this.
I was sysadmin for the Ad company that had the Microsoft account in the UK.
One of the things I was asked was 'Will it run inside these specs', which I think was 2MB RAM, and not much disk at all..
The answer I gave was that yes it would, if you left it to boot up for a good 10 minutes, and didn't want to run any applications on top of it. Or install anything else either.
The resounding answer to that was "Great, we CAN advertise that it'll run on those specs". Even if I point blank told them it'd be useless, and to never advocate running it like that.
The point is that Advertising is all about pushing how far you can bend the truth (or lack of it) without crossing the line of blatant lying that'll get you sued or fined.
The "Vista Ready" sticker is an advertising token as much as anything. Yes, you can install Vista on it. Yes, it'll run Vista. Doesn't say anything about doing anything else with it (hey, it never said it'd run the latest greatest game, or even load your word processor!).
An interesting addendum to this argument is reported here on The Register. Essentially, the ISPs are saying to the Copyright Cartels "OK, We'll randomly pull people off the net. However, when we get it wrong, they will sue. And for lots. If you're willing to foot the bill for legals costs, AND settlements when it goes wrong, then we have a deal.".
Once the Copyright Cartels realise that they are going to have to deal with the realities of their situation (and spend money), methinks they'll think twice. If not, I wonder how many likely looking bits of music and video will be doing the rounds.. And how many of those will NOT be copyright.. And once accounts are pulled, how fast the coffers of the Cartels start emptying until they scream "Enough", and put everything back as it once was.
I played games on a computer 30 years ago.. And still play now..
Interestingly, Nintendo noticed that there was a tendancy for companies to market to the under 25 market.. And chose to open up the Wii to the older population segment.. And it seems to be doing rather well for that..
Think you've just explained things away yourself there in asking if people want to switch because the competition is crap or whether they want to pick a superior system?
By moving to a superior system, you're basically saying that comparatively (setting the baseline of judgement as the system you're evaluating), the system you're upgrading from IS crap. Comparatively.
If both camps go the way they are heading at the moment, MS will shortly provide something that you can't change a system fan on without re-purchasing new license, while adding bloat and shine, and only letting you play a valid movie from your latest HD drive if you have the latest monitor with the latest variant of hardware DRM built in (which you'll need to buy another license of Windows for, as changing a monitor means you're not using your original computer anymore). Complete overstatement, I know, but you get the picture of 'following the trend' to it's extreme.
Linux on the other hand seems to be heading towards being far more user friendly, having things just working out of the box. It'll probably not have all the small features on it that Windows has, and one user in several hundred thousand may find useful on the odd Tuesday when the moon's blue. But it'll be highly functional to do what most people find suitable and useful (if you want better, you'll either buy the commercial apps if they get ported, or pay large amounts of money to buy the bigger OSes).
Really though, I don't want it to be a choice of picking any evils. Optimum would be an ecosystem of OSes, each with it's strengths, communicating freely on an agreed set of protocols. You pick the one that suits your needs, and just get on with life. All choices are from good systems, just most of them aren't suitable for the task you want to do.
Actually, they're not telling anyone where to go.. Instead they're making sure they control as much of the energy supply as they can (a significant amount), and work with as great a versatility as they can. Think the US a hundred or so years ago. Large amounts of lawlessness, no real restrictions on doing things, people were trodden on in the path to making a fast buck.. Part of that shady history meant that people could copy ideas, and make them better, with no real downside (patents? Copyright? Pfft!) and certainly no cost. Russia has very little right now apart from large amounts of raw reserves, and a hell of a lot of top notch talent. Russia doesn't need to tell anyone where to go.. The politicians are largely scared because there is nothing they can do against the new, fiscally aware Russia. Sanctions won't work (it controls energy to too many neighbouring countries, and has a significant stake in Europe), it's not signed up to all the trade treaties, so they don't really apply.. Legal pounding won't work. And invasion (as I've seen many advocate) simply won't happen because escalation to nuclear is likely and everyone loses. For the moment, they're happy using their botnet to make money. Which means leaving the 'host' economies well alone, and hoping they prosper, as like any parasite, they get most gains from a healthy host. Really upset them to the point of wanting to lash out, and I have the nasty suspicion they could do some real damage to completely unexpected areas.. Enough to wipe out percentiles from the stock markets. Which is probably the large reason nobody's going in heavy handed. At the moment the 'status quo' still exists. I'd really hate to see this get nasty.
You can happily copyright the code, but shouldn't be able to patent it. The physical object would still be patented.
You don't violate the patent on the object just by typing the code, or even executing it. You violate the patent by actually having the robot arm create the final object. You could run the code to your heart's content if it were operating in 'test' without creating the final object without violating the patent.
I'd reccommend getting a Yuan account too. And yes, they still know where you come from. Having a dollar account and a Yen account just means you have money in other currencies not tied to the fluctuations of your own homeland's rises and falls. The transactions you make will still originate in country you live (unless you travel, and have bank accounts actually in those countries).
So, even if I paid from a dollar account for some music from the store (sold in dollar prices) they would not allow the transaction to complete, as it was initiated from somewhere outside the region they feel like selling at that price to.
Which is why over here in the UK, the phrase "Rip Off Britain" is used a lot; even though quite a few of us these days have accounts in different currencies, the big companies still refuse to sell to us at international rates. For example, shop on Adobe, check out the prices. You go to the US store, and a product costs, say, $99. That's fair enough. Go straight to the UK store, and the price is approximately £115, which at current rates is twice the amount.
Now, because a transaction is commenced in the UK, they refuse to sell to you at the $99 rate. Even if you pay in dollars right the way through. Nope, because you're in a different area of the world, it costs over twice as much. Zero packaging, or transmission fees. Nothing extra to pay (well, perhaps 17.5% VAT, which doesn't amount to the 120% extra levy charged).
I get the sneaky suspicion that Amazon will do just the same when they open the international stores. And it's beginning to irk me. The companies offshore jobs to get the most man time they can for the money (by paying peanuts), yet refuse to let the customer purchase from the cheapest country to get the greatest amount of product for the money (because that would be unethical, honest, and now illegal!).
Bad, no.. Interesting.. Yes..
Worrisome, most certainly.
Out of all the techs we've yet produced as a race, all of them (with the possible exception of the nascent self-replicating nanotechnology field) have been firmly controlled by humanity.
Biotech on the other hand, we create something, and when it leaves (and sometimes before it leaves) the 'home', it gets all grown up, with the possibility of getting a serious attitude of it's own and some seriously big boots to come back kicking with.
With all our machines, you turn off the power, and they're useless. Starve them of fuel, and they stop.
With something living we don't have the 'off switch'. Even if we do at the time it's released, it only takes a few organisms to be 'faulty' and not respond to the 'off'.
So, no.. It's not bad. It's just something that we have to be far more careful of than we do the digital. If digital is broken, the worst that happens is that money is lost, and people get miserable (OK, possibly VERY miserable).
If Biotech gets 'Broken', lots of people can die. Rapidly.
root@SoupDragon:~/# man woman
No manual entry for woman
Which makes me wonder if the shell requirement is solely so he can make a Cron job and have automated entry?
It seems more and more that the Law is heading towards penalizing anyone that employs some knowledge in the technical arena that worries people who don't understand it.
The end result is that people in the countries where the laws preventing basic (and in some cases slightly cavalier) activities becomes a criminal offense, thus dissuading a large amount of the indigenous populace from testing the limits themselves (without doing hard time/losing the shirt).
Net effect: Foreign countries that are immune from prosecution by the Law of the Land have a huge advantage, as no well meaning "White Hat" can help a company shore up its defences. There is no adaptation and evolution of the security mechanisms.
If some group then decides en masse to perform some disruption, the security is far less than it ever should be (i.e. non-existent). Resulting in huge damage to the infrastructure (possibly unrecoverable).
Not to say this is new behaviour; back in the Medieval period, distinctly unpleasant lords would 'shoot the messenger' when soldiers disagreed with their defence arrangements. However, historically, the bloodlines of these particular lords were thinned out as their defences were overwhelmed in battle and they were slaughtered.
Not that I'm making any predictions, I just think it's an interesting historical trend.
Should be Research. Knowing how to get the right answers (and not just trusting to an "I feel lucky" google run), or find the right information.
Once you know where to find the latest information, coupled with the theoretical knowledge you've gained through your Uni years, you'll find that you're able to keep current (or at the bleeding edge) of your chosen path, once you've tinkered about with various roles in "The Real World", and found one that fits you.
May be a little put off by this. After all, a lot of corporate types just love to travel with their laptops, as they've got all kinds of presentations on there. Some of which are treated as commercial secrets.
Yes, it's a false sense of security, but a lot of the non-IT people are happier if they have their false sense of security (when it doesn't hurt the real picture), but this seems to shout loud and clear that business travellers shouldn't bring Laptops to the states. You just know the obstreperous security staff on the boring stretch are going to pull you over just to relieve the boredom, and go through your laptop, just because they can.
This is going to put a crimp in your travel times (possibly miss your connection if they're actually feeling like a good old look through to see what's there).
You then have your commercial secrets out in the open with someone who definitely isn't going to be held by any NDA.
Whether it's a valid worry or not, it's enough to make people with a smattering of tech knowledge and a fair amount of business acumen think twice about taking anything mobile to the states (no pre-made presentations on a machine, no great demos that are tried and working on a particular platform that your clients don't YET have, so on, so forth).
Net effect? The government can pat themselves on the back for riding roughshod over and claiming their abilities overriding politeness and fair conduct. And something that'll help chill overseas investment and the flow of commerce into the States. At exactly the time that all the trade that can be drummed up is needed..
Engineering didn't matter, because, hell.. Once one person started using the wheel, everyone did, so what was the advantage in anyone having it?
Though really, it's more like the public transport system. By rights, it should be cheaper and more efficient if everyone used the mass transit system, and we all hopped on busses and trains run by large commercial entities with a monopoly on all transport.
Reality, on the other hand doesn't quite work that way. There are a lot of places that will simply want their own stuff (hey, you control your building and your servers a lot more closely than putting them in a big datacenter, and hey.. What about when your building loses external network connections?).
The world is a diverse place with a lot of different cases. And any company that trusts their lifeblood to another (storing in one datacenter) trusts a little more than they really should.
The IT department, even in the world of datacenters, will still be there. Same as facilities departments, same as every other department, just the role may shift a little.
Hang on a sec.. This would be the same 2007 that Oil hit an all time high, a credit crunch of such epic proportions that it's hitting the world wide banking system to the point that Governments are having to bail out financial institutions.. People are losing houses and jobs.. Economies are looking shaky, and unemployment is starting to creep up in a rather scary fashion..
And they blithely put it down to piracy and competition from other entertainments. Don't you think that maybe.. Just maybe.. The fact that people don't have the money to spend on fripperies, and are actually worried about their ability to keep roof over head is also a factor in this?
The problem with the subscription model is persuading everyone that they need to keep subscribing. People with PCs that don't connect to the net. How do you enforce subscription? Time it out and say "Hey, you're out of time, please call microsoft with your credit card details to enable you to use your PC again"?.
Even those net connected are going to get a little antsy with the messages that they have to keep paying to keep using something they consider they've already bought as part of their PC purchase in the first place.
Given that in Europe, people are already getting itchy feet, and starting to migrate to alternate operating systems, or at least making greater use of them, MS is already under pressure not to upset too many people much more than it already has if they want them to keep buying.
Oh, and as an aside, you probably downloaded Slackware in late '93, not '92, as Slackware did their first release in '93.. I seem to remember Linus releasing the kernel in '93.. As that's when we started tinkering round with it at the Uni I was studying at then..
Just my opinion though.. Subscription may indeed be MS' panacea.. Though personally, I'd find it way too much of a risk (governments are currently shying away from reliance on MS as it puts too much power in the hands of a commercial entity.. What are they going to do when they're told "Pay us a tithe yearly, or ELSE!"?).