In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Fri, 05 Oct 2007 02:56:04 +0100
<45840896.yj4tSsrNLh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> ____/ [H]omer on Friday 05 October 2007 00:13 : \____
>
>> Verily I say unto thee, that Linonut spake thusly:
>>
>>> If you think about it, it might well be that the less commercialized
>>> Linux stays, the better off are we Linux users.
>>>
>>> We don't need no stinking market. We just need decent broadband.
>>
>> Great! Now all we need to worry about is Net Neutrality.
>
> And the MSBBC has just blown a fuse in this country as ISPs are up in arms.
> Microsoft doesn't give a s* about neutrality. Tiering is part of its idealogy,
> mentality, and revenue model (assumption).
With all fairness, Microsoft isn't alone in this. Take a
look at any major manufacturer; chances are there are
basic models, Deluxe models (I'm almost old enough to
remember when "Deluxe" was a new word :-), at least in
the American advertising lexicon [+] ), and ridiculously
expensive mdoels that might occasionally make the news
(e.g., the diamond-encrusted phone and the dessert that's
complete with gemstone).
Dell in particular has stratified and diversified its
offerings; the basic desktop is ultra cheap but the
gaming desktops can get ridiculously expensive, up to
$7,000 at one point (they might have had to back off to
$5,000 now) -- and that's base price.
Cars come from basic to ultra de-luxe with extra bling.
Compare a basic Kia or Cooper S to a Bentley; even the
Cooper is more upscale than the Mini preceding it; the Mini
was for awhile the "joke car of Britain" in the 1980s or
thereabouts, although not nearly as bad as the East German
Trabant, but it didn't get much respect. The Mini Cooper
S, however, is a rather nice variant, if still small and
reasonably affordable. And then there's the Mercedes,
the Lexuses, the Infinities (Infinitys?). [*]
As for Net Neutrality...I'm not exactly sure what it means,
except that anti-NN will mean more sophisticated routers
to process the packet overrides that will be required.
(IP does allow this; there's an options area.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc791#section-3.1
The Security internet option might be employed,
or perhaps a new class/number pair added for the
facilitation of Net Tierality...to coin a phrase,
since "anti-Net Neutrality" doesn't really quite
cut it.)
Presumably, the general idea will be to allow more
flexible cross-vendor fertilization and network
innovation -- to put a positive spin on all this,
and it's not all that positive if one looks behind
the curtain; the general idea is to try to seize
the data and extract the good stuff from it,
presumably.
Of course, the Internet has a corrosive effect
generally anyway; the $20-$40 per month payment
goes right to the ISP, which has to pay *their*
uplink, all the way up to ... somebody. How does
one prevent this from becoming a gigantic pyramid
scheme in its own right?
The good news: ISPs do provide basic service --
delivering packets. So it's not quite the same as the
scheme Charles Ponzi devised long ago, selling worthless
tickets for unpromised goods and/or securities.
The bad news: delivering packets does nothing; one has to
have servers at the other end to deliver them *to*, as
well as the sender to get the results back.
And then there's the remnants of the Telecommunications
Act, just to make life interesting. Is VoIP to be
treated as a mobile service, a carrier service, or a
local exchange? (And to think that was passed in 1996!
It's not all that old -- but already it's ancient...)
Perhaps it's not all bad...the Internet might become
similar to the power companies, in time, an essential,
needed service that delivers basic packets, including
phone, video, music, and orders. The more expensive stuff
gets paid for via secure transmissions from one's bank
or something.
And then there's the concept of money -- but this post
runs overlong already...
Anyway, Microsoft's main sin is not the market
verticalization (though it does look slightly silly at
the OS level; might as well put diamonds in a house's
foundation [?]); it's the shoddiness of its implementation
(minor but highly annoying) coupled with the deliberate
shutting-out of competitors such as Netscape and 4DOS
(major) and the insidious "pay-us-for-every-box-shipped"
contracts in a razor-thin market, leveraging and corrupting
it (major). From a market that was fairly diverse
(Osborne, Commodore 64 & 128, Atari, Amstrad, Tandy Co,
IMSAI, Apple, and a lot of homebrew [!] efforts, to a market
that is dominated by Intel clones -- yes, Intel has its
share of sins, though I'd have to dig for the details --
with shoddy crap slathered on, some of it to keep earlier
crap from falling apart.
Are we afraid of change?
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | "Sadly, many of these brilliant people have been blinded by the stock
> | price and unable to see that Microsoft is also the key architect of
> | the greatest financial pyramid scheme this century.
> |
> | It is not uncommon for participants in pyramid schemes to lose their
> | emotional bearings. My close friends who work at Microsoft are
> | particularly upset over my work and it is possible that even Bill
> | Gates and Steve Ballmer do not realize the implications of their
> | financial practices."
> `----
>
> http://www.billparish.com/msftfraudfacts.html
>
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | "As with all pyramid schemes, it is important to get as close to tier
> | 1 as possible. From a practical standpoint, usually only tiers 1 and 2
> | will derive significant long-term economic rewards from such schemes."
> `----
>
> http://reactor-core.org/microsoft-pyramid.html
>
And the rest of us, of course, are out of whatever we paid
to attempt to get in, unless the tree gets deep enough --
but a 1:10 tree branches out pretty quickly, and there are
only 6.5B people in the world, which is enough for only
about 8-9 levels, with the next-to-bottom getting $10 for
every $1 of effort. Might be good for a lunch or two;
that's about it.
[+] dictionary.reference.com suggests it comes from the
French phrase "de luxe" ("of luxury") in the 1810-1820 time
frame, further deriving from the Latin "luxus", meaning
"excess" or "abundance". So I'm nowhere near *that* old.
[*] Gaaah. It's bad enough when car companies misspell
"millennia". The proper plural is of course "infinities",
but one wonders regarding the Infinity car model.
[?] I could see that working, actually, to some extent,
but gravel is a *lot* cheaper. The only thing diamonds
might have going for them is better heat conduction --
hardly useful in that particular setting.
[!] Google coughed up www.homebrewcpu.com -- which
apparently is a slightly anachronistic attempt to recapture
that era. It's actually an interesting and beautifully
done machine (in its way, prettier than www.imsai.net),
built wholly from TTL SSI parts and wirewrap, using a
freely available set of schematics. Physically, it's 19"
x 11" x 8.5" (maybe), about the size of a large breadbox.
It runs at 3.75 MHz with 4 MB of static RAM, 6 interrupt
lines, 22-bit address buss (with a pseudo-23 bit), 8
bit data, 2 serial ports, and no graphics to speak of.
I don't think it'll run Windows anytime soon, but it runs
Adventure tolerably well, according to the Website.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx -- insert random chain letter here
Linux. Because it's not the desktop that's
important, it's the ability to DO something
with it.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
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