91–100 of 184 posts
And I recall still using/seeing them in the early 1980s here in UK!
They were still heavily used at that time in the Market Research industry for recording data entry (of surveys). In fact the term punching is still used in the industry to this day in reference to data entry.
Now please excuse me, I have a movie to watch.
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Because the people who (#)&#(#^^&% write Linux need money for things like houses, cars, food, health care, school, and so on. That's why money counts.
As opposed to people who produce food, or oil, or anything else ? But giving them artificial monopolies is bad - right ? People who wrote Linux found a model that works without forcing other people to pay for it. They do rely on copyright to prevent "free riders" but even without it the financial model is the same, eg. FreeBSD, or any other non copy-left licensed opensource project that has a commercial story. It tur…
No, not in and of itself. It's a messy compromise. Things like software patents are pretty much just bad. Copyright, in a limited form, seems to be good. Patents on things like medicines can be good in that they pay for research. All of them should be more limited than they currently are, most likely.
Linux works, but who's to say it's 'optimal'? Given the huge amount of value it creates, I think relatively little filters back into the development of the system.
> consumer would get the value even if he didn't pay for it
If no one pays for it, the consumer will not get the value because the developer will have to do something else to make money, and will therefore not produce the code. Luckily, in the case of Linux, some money is funneled back into development, so it's not impossible, it's just much, much more complex than with "intellectual property".
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>The BBC commissioned a study that claims the Charles Dicken's brand brings in about £280m/year to the UK's economy. But who cares how much it "brings in" ? Why is money the sole metric of wealth. How much value does open source provide - take linux for eg. which is used in pretty much every aspect of computing these days - from cell phones to super computers - how much value has it provided to the consumers and allo…
Why is money the sole metric of wealth. How much value does open source provide Why are feet and miles the metric of distance, can't we just have near and far? More seriously: value has to have a common unit of exchange. The grocery store clerk isn't going to give you your shopping for free because you happened to write some piece of software he isn't even aware of. Money allows value to be stored and transferred. An…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The BBC commissioned a study that claims the Charles Dicken's brand brings in about £280m/year to the UK's economy. But who cares how much it "brings in" ? Why is money the sole metric of wealth. How much value does open source provide - take linux for eg. which is used in pretty much every aspect of computing these days - from cell phones to super computers - how much value has it provided to the consumers and allo…
Why is money the sole metric of wealth. How much value does open source provide Why are feet and miles the metric of distance, can't we just have near and far? More seriously: value has to have a common unit of exchange. The grocery store clerk isn't going to give you your shopping for free because you happened to write some piece of software he isn't even aware of. Money allows value to be stored and transferred. An…
Much of mainstream economics reduces the broad philosophical concept of value to the narrow economic concept of exchange-value or price.
And it's not warm and fuzzy: what's the "value" of an unpolluted atmosphere? What's the value of good health? These things generally defy attempts to be priced (though what attempts have been made are risible), yet are fundamental - perhaps even more so than money - to a decent human existence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As opposed to people who produce food, or oil, or anything else ? But giving them artificial monopolies is bad - right ? People who wrote Linux found a model that works without forcing other people to pay for it. They do rely on copyright to prevent "free riders" but even without it the financial model is the same, eg. FreeBSD, or any other non copy-left licensed opensource project that has a commercial story. It tur…
> But giving them artificial monopolies is bad - right ? No, not in and of itself. It's a messy compromise. Things like software patents are pretty much just bad . Copyright, in a limited form, seems to be good. Patents on things like medicines can be good in that they pay for research. All of them should be more limited than they currently are, most likely. Linux works, but who's to say it's 'optimal'? Given the hug…
And that's the crux of the problem. You seem to think that it's optimal if it puts money in to developers pocket. I'm saying it's optimal it provides more value for less cost to the consumer. Market is about consumers not about producers.
>If no one pays for it, the consumer will not get the value because the developer will have to do something else to make money, and will therefore not produce the code.
Where did I say nobody pays for it ?
If you want to develop software and charge for it you're still left with different options, you can deploy with contracts/NDA style to the Oracle type market, you can sell software as a service and keep the source private (you can do this even with games by streaming them), or you can do ad-based apps like Zynga and mobile guys, you have major copying in that space and very little copyright enforcement - it sucks for the developers but it works for the consumers. And there's doing on demand stuff, where the customers pay in advanced, and can subsequently opensource it to distribute costs of maintenance or even split the costs by forming alliances (I've seen this in energy sector where three big companies decided to standardize and share some data exchange software), regular consulting/maintenance approach, etc. And there are probably many other ways to make money without IP.
Demand still exists, you just need to find a way to profit from that demand without IP.
All I'm trying to say is that intellectual property is a legal monopoly on non-rivalrous non-excludable good, it violates the nature of innovation (incremental improvement and copying are essential) and copying as creating new value for free instead of stealing.
The BBC commissioned a study [1] that claims the Charles Dicken's brand brings in about £280m/year to the UK's economy. This from a public domain "brand". Meanwhile companies like Disney lobby for perpetual copyright to protect their own interest at the cost of all the lost opportunities that will never exist. I don't understand how politicians in the free enterprise countries, especially American republicans with th…
Copyright doesn't just protect entertainment content - it protects enlightening content, as well. Science and technology are the real industry markets that will 'benefit' from these copyright laws going through - Disney is just the soft glove over the iron fist that will make it 'acceptable' to the general populace to maintain control over information that can be used to disrupt existing technocratic class cultures.
I see 2 ways of fighting this:
1) Civil disobedience - Pirate everything and share while willingly accepting the consequences. 2) Shine lights on the evil doers. Support wiki leaks. Publicize. Organize voting drives.
I have bills to pay so I support number two. Great social change requires number 1.
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It's not a sob story. It's basic logic. You haven't refuted anything I've said, except for claiming that the story is one given by the likes of Disney and the RIAA, which is irrelevant and untrue. The only valid argument you've said is that people create art for reasons other than making money. Which is of course partially true. But obviously, to a lesser extent. I'm sure many people on HN would still program without…
yeah right because without copyright we wouldn't have shakespeare etc. ... oh wait ... copyright didn't even exist back then?! also i feel sorry for you that you think money is the prime motivating factor for creative work. ever heard of the starving artist?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_plays#Source_ma...
http://www.shakespeare-w.com/english/shakespeare/source.html