[Sigia-l] Buy or rent?

[Skot Nelson]

On Feb 16.2005, at 19:36, Listera wrote:

> Skot Nelson:
>
>> music is a product
>
> The whole point of the Napster/Microsoft approach is to change the 
> notion
> that music is a product.

agreed. and the whole point of bubble gum pop hits of the moment is to 
do the same.

miles davis recorded kind of blue in 1959, and i listen to it at least 
once every two weeks. that's a product worth paying for.

> They'd like you to regard it as momentary
> experience, the source of which, as the argument goes, is immaterial.

right, and brtiney spears recorded what? when?

i mean, i remember the videos. some quality work there.

the recording industry may have forgotten it's own problem here. but 
that's off topic.


> This goes beyond just music. Grid promoters IBM and Sun want you to 
> rent
> computer power, something you've been accustomed to purchase in the 
> form of
> computer products.

indeed. and something which most companies over purchase and 
underutilize.

admittedly, individual examples are poor but right now i'm typing an 
email on a PowerBook G4. Pretty powerful hardware, that's not exactly 
being used.

if IBM and Sun get the pricing/computing model right, this could be the 
biggest breakthrough in computing since...well...people realized 
windows sucked?

> it will be de-productized (how's that for a word)

horrible.

>
>> loyalty has been a goal of commerce since day one
>
> I don't think commercial history supports that at all. Perhaps the most
> commercially successful company around, MSFT

you're going to argue that microsoft customers aren't loyal? customers 
who repeatedly purchase upgrades of office, even  if the file format 
hasn't changed? customers that repeatedly purchase windows updates even 
though this inevitable cycle consumes computing cycles so rapidly that 
you need to upgrade hardware too?

man, if i had those kinds of non-loyal customers i would need the loyal 
ones.