buffer overflow

In regards to Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar, more specifically the chapter of the same name, I have an observation.

Many of the open source projects that Raymond would refer to as bazaar projects, aren’t really 100% bazaar. Specifically, if we look at the Linux kernel, changes still all go through Linus Torvalds. It’s more like a cathedral with a personal bazaar that everybody knows about. There is this vast assortment of people, all making contributions, but contributions to Linus. Yes, the original authors are credited where credit is due, but I can’t just magically check something into the source tree for the kernel, it has to get okayed by Linus, or I believe any other of a small group that Linus picked anyway.

Also, in software firms today, you might have 2, 3, 4, 10 projects on the go, and each project might be working on something specific to their project, but a lot of the work they do can be reused in other projects the company is working on, so therefore, in this cathedral type establishment, we still have a bazaar type model where everybody is contributing to everything, as a base layer underneath it all.

It’s quite intriguing, but the cathedral and the bazaar almost work together.

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Here is my essay on product wars

Product War: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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I have an idea for the RIAA: sure Google.

Sure! It would totally work. I mean, you already sued Jesse Jordan for making a search engine, why not sue Larry Page and Sergey Brin too, since, you know, they made a search engine too. And you know what? I can go to Google right now, search for “ torrent” and within hours, even minutes sometimes, have an album or the entire discography downloaded. So go for it RIAA; sue Google.

Oh wait! See I guess the problem is Jesse Jordan couldn’t afford lawyers to defend his case in court, which he totally would have won. You guys must have realized this and that’s why you settled out of court for his $12,000 of college tuition money, thereby getting your money.

But Google has lawyers. Probably lots of them. Probably good ones too. And for them to come to court and say “fuck you RIAA” would be too easy and all the RIAA would be out would be money, which isn’t really the goal of these random acts of stupidity.

So I guess that’s why Google hasn’t been sued by the RIAA.

The RIAA tries to only sue people who, in their best interest, must settle out of court for whatever money they have, and since the RIAA is paying their lawyers anyway, but now doesn’t have to pay court fees or anything, makes a nice, albeit small profit.

If they sued anybody who would do well to take the case to court (those whose out of court settlement cost would be greater than the court and lawyer fees), the RIAA would lose, probably end up paying money, and get bad press.

Now I understand.

Stupid RIAA, search engines are for everybody.

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Oligopoly

Normally we just talk about monopolies (*cough* Microsoft cough), so it is of no suprise that this word was a tad new to me. I have the feeling I’ve heard of it before but it didn’t pop out when I was trying to describe what I had in mind. Anyway, the word of the day (despite what my sidebar says) is oligopoly.

An oligopoly is when a few select parties control a market, instead of a single entity as in a monopoly. This idea popped into my head when I read the RIAA quote in the internet radio discussion:

Well, we don’t really model this as an industry with thousands of webcasters, we think it should be an industry with, you know, five or seven big players who can pay a high rate and it’s a stable, predictable market.

So like the music and movie production industries, the television and radio broadcasting industries, they want to cripple the internet radio industry like they have the others. The industries concerning music and movie production and television and radio broadcasting are oligopolies whether you want to belive it or not. Sure there are a few smaller players and independent labels and studios and stations, but really, it’s all controlled by a select few. If the small companies get out of line, the big players have the muscle to ‘fix’ the problem. The nice thing about the internet is anybody can be anything on the internet so if you want to be a radio DJ you can. Assuming internet radio was treated like regular radio, sure you’d still have to pay fees for music you want to play, but you don’t need the overhead cost of a big building, and broadcasting equipment. You could run your entire setup off free software and the things you’d have to pay for would be bandwidth and the normal copyright fees like any radio station, and those could be paid for by advertising. But no, the RIAA screwed it up again for the regular joe.

In this situation, an oligopoly is just as bad as a monopoly.

Thanks RIAA!

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I’ve been quite enjoying Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. One section that really caught my eye was where he compares the penalties for ‘stealing.’

[W]hen I take a CD from Tower Records, the maximum fine that
might be imposed on me, under California law, at least, is $1,000. According
to the RIAA, by contrast, if I download a ten-song CD, I’m liable
for $1,500,000 in damages.

This makes just shake my head in disgust. I suppose it comes down to who believes they are getting the short end of the stick. If I steal a CD from HMV, HMV gets screwed, as they are out a CD, and they are the ones that lose money. They’ve already bought the CD from the distribution house, which has already bought the CD from the record label, so therefore the record label has already made money. If somebody robs every HMV in the country, the record label doesn’t care. In fact, they would be laughing since HMV would have to rebuy a large amount of media, giving the the record company more media.

With P2P file sharing however, the record companies believe they are the ones getting stolen from. And they have a point, but they seem to treat it as if somebody is stealing the master copy of a CD, thereby robbing them of the ability to ever sell that CD. This is completely not the case. First of all, the person who makes the CD or song initially available is the really the person at fault, if we want to talk like that. By downloading it, I’m only taking advantage of something already available. This may still be wrong on other levels but we aren’t discussing that. Think of this: if person A steal a loaf of bread from Safeway, eats a piece, and then leaves the loaf of bread on a table for all to see, and then person B goes up and eats a piece. Who is at fault? Person B simply because they ate a piece of bread that was out and about? I think not.

I think the main problem is when you download a song or CD, you’re not getting anything tangible. This creates the impression that you’re not doing anything wrong, and gives the record company a reason to claim an exorbitant amount of damage fees.  This is an inherent problem with record (and other) companies who feel like they can never make enough money.

le sigh

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Every year there are more and more patents granted in the United States. Only 9 of the 45 years from 1963 to 2007 showed a decreased in granted patents from the year before (1966, 1967, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1983, and 1996). (Click image for larger view)

Every year, patents are granted on similar but sufficiently different products. Situations like that result in product wars. The first and best product war that I can recall off the top of my head, was Betamax vs VHS in the 1970’s. Shooting from the hip, with no research behind this other than my dad’s words, Sony wouldn’t license Betamax nicely, so JVC created VHS and practically gave it away. VHS prospered, despite Betamax’s superior technology. Should I look into this case further, more research will have to happen.

A nice throwback to those days, has been the HD-DVD vs BluRay war, which recently ended with Sony trumping Toshiba with it’s BluRay format. This time, Sony was smart, and the superior product persevered.

Another product war which didn’t really seem like a product war was the flash memory war. This is a much wider war including SecureDigital (SD),  Compact Flash, Memory Stick, MMC, xD, Smart Media, and the ever popular USB stick. This product war has been waged for some time, probably due to the fact that SanDisk has their hand in 4 of the formats. What’s worse is for each format, there seems to be 2-6 variations/improved versions of the format, not all of which are backwards or forwards compatable. Luckily this war is fading out, with SecureDigital taking the lead, and certain other formats falling behind clinging to their inventors (xD to Olympus and FujiFilm, Memory Stick to Sony).

Other ‘wars’ can be looked at such as AM vs FM, records vs 8-Track, 8-Track vs cassette tapes, cassette tapes vs CD’s, VHS vs DVD, DVD vs BluRay, CRT vs LCD, Xbox vs Playstation, Gameboy vs Gamegear, etc, etc, etc, etc. Many of these weren’t really ‘wars’ in the same sense as Betamax and VHS. In cassette tapes vs CD’s for instance, there was a clear benefit to consumers with CD”s. They sounded better (even to the average consumer), they were not susceptible to magnetic destruction, they were lighter and more compact, and they were a nice kickback to vinyl records with their shape and operation. With Betamax and VHS though, the average consumer didn’t care. Only the techies really knew the Betamax format was better (again this is based on what I know, which has not been backed by research at this point in time, so VHS might have actually been a better quality format). All the consumer knew was that more option was available in the VHS world: “oh look more movies and more companies making VHS players.” This made VHS the win in the war, where CD’s were simply an advancement in the playing of recorded music. Betamax and VHS were the same advancement.

I hope to expand on this topic and explore the effects on culture that such patent and product wars have. Stay tuned.

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