How useful would a Radio integration be with an ERP? Very. How difficult should it be to build it? It should be trivial. How expensive in reality? For the ERPs I know about, it could only be done over time in onesy-twosies on a slower-than-as-needed basis.

11:42:15 PM    comment   

Cooper amplifies a point that Dave originally brought up -- he says that Lessig's 10-year escrow idea would probably harm most normal ISVs and leave companies like Microsoft stronger.  The logic is simple.  Microsoft's biggest competitor is previous versions of Microsoft products, and the perception among customers that a less functional product is "good enough". 

There are still plenty of people who say "Windows 98 does everything I want; why would I upgrade to XP?"  These are the same customers who realize that StarOffice is functionally equivalent to Office 95, and will say "StarOffice is good enough for what I need to do, so why would I pay for Office XP?"

If Lessig had his way, Office 95 would be free, and then those same people would be saying "Office 95 does everything I need; I'll just use that instead of taking a risk on StarOffice, because I know that Microsoft already has two better versions I could pay money for if I ever outgrow this free version."  In other words, this ten-year escrow idea could be seen as a government mandate to give products away for free in order to put competitors out of business.  It boggles the mind.

(Also via Dave, Meg is asking why healthcare companies don't treat their customers more like customers, then in the same breath asks why the government doesn't provide universal healthcare.  Honestly, I don't think that the customer service would improve if the healthcare companies become dependent on the government instead of relying on business from customers like Meg.  And I take a tiny bit of exception to the complaints about health insurance being so expensive for the "self-insured" - health insurance is expensive for everyone.  Just because my insurance premiums get subtracted before ever showing up in my paycheck, it doesn't mean the insurance was free.  The money has to come from somewhere.  And although I may not be self-insured, I am self-ensured.  Suckling down six cans a day ensures that you never need to waste time eating for sustenance, and can instead eat recreationally when you have time to enjoy it.)

10:58:23 PM    comment   

Simon Phipps of Sun Microsystems is preaching "Free Speech, Free Beer, and Free Software", in a transparent attempt to curry favor with the Socialist Software Revolutionary Front.  While he doesn't really say much, and seems to be trying to justify Sun's ambivalence to the party line, he does manage to repeat a few of the propaganda buzz-phrases, including "Free Software is about Liberty".  During the days of German partition, when East Germany was locked in socialist hell but insisted on calling herself a democracy; West German old men and newspapers were careful to be precise and refer to the East as "das sogenannte DDR" ("the so-called German Democratic Republic").  By the same token, every time I hear FSF equated with liberty, I think "das sogenannte FSF" -- anything else would be dishonest. 

Larry Lessig tries to propagate the same untruth as Phipps, saying "Software gets compiled, and the compiled code is essentially unreadable; but in order to copyright software, the author need not reveal the source code."  This is wrong on so many levels.  Forget the fact that people routinely reverse-engineer other people's code without the source, and pay no attention to the fact that the source code of Linux is essentially unreadable to 90% of the people who identify themselves as open source advocates (this is not sarcastic; I am being charitable).  The fact is, my computer reads compiled code just fine.

In fact, not only is most "open source" unreadable to its advocates; it seems the licenses themselves are unreadable.  Dare Obasanjo's informal survey is showing that less than 90% of the Kuro5hin population can score higher than 75% on the FSF's GPL quiz.  And if the GPL is not dizzying enough, try reading the Redhat Linux EULA, which is pretty typical for "open source" distros: "Red Hat Linux is a modular operating system made up of hundreds of individual software components, each of which was written and copyrighted individually.  Each component has its own applicable end user license agreement ... you must review the on-line documentation that accompanies each of the Linux Programs included in this product for the applicable Linux EULA.  Review these Linux EULAs carefully, in order to understand your rights..."

That's a whole lot of liberty; at least 31 flavors of it.  I wonder if any humans exist who actually understand the interactions of all of these intermangled licenses.  But I guess liberty is better served by being able to read someone else's C routines than by being able to understand what sort of legal commitments you are making.

10:54:12 PM    comment