Re: How to generate a Windows style license key

Luc The Perverse wrote:
> "David Eather" <eather@tpg.com.au> wrote in message
> news:433e5302@dnews.tpgi.com.au...
>> Luc The Perverse wrote:
>>> <posting@big-numbers.com> wrote in message
>>> news:1127999196.630867.143060@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>>>> I also think is it a crime if you can duplicate your software 10
>>>> billion times and sell it to 10 billion customers over and over
>>>> again for the SAME PRICE. (Microsoft$) (The question arises
>>>> should there be a legal limit to success?)
>>>
>>>
>>> In favor of communism?
>>
>> Let me quote from the father of capitalist though (Adam Smith "An
>> Inquiry Into The Causes Of The Wealth Of Nations) - "the purpose of
>> business is to serve the public good".
>>
>> A company that refuses to behave like a good cooperate citizen needs
>> to be regulated and if it still flouts the law it should be broken
>> up or shut down and the directors made accountable.
>
>
> All big businesses are going to do whatever they can to promote their
> product and corner the market.
>
> They only get in trouble if they succeed.
>

No. They get into trouble if there business practices are unfair or
anti-competitive or illegal.

> Microsoft is a huge cash cow and employs many people. People all
> over the world pay a US company for an OS. You are saying that
> should end . . . because they charge the same price to sell to
> billions of people?

Read the news. MS has been sued (and lost) more times than anyone can
count. Until recently they keep a cash reserve of $75 billion dollars in
case of legal action. Microsoft has a habit of altering its code in a way
which breaks other companies applications while at just the same time
Microsoft is getting into that exact market - AutoCAD springs to mind, but
there are others.

>
> It seems to me you are ignoring the Laffer curve concept by proposing
> we implement a taxation such that the tax rate is (1-e^(-a * I)) where a
> is some positive constant and I is the amount of revenue a
> company is generating. (Perhaps this is not exactly what you were
> saying, but the general idea would be the same.)

No. The role of business in society is much, much larger than just
providing taxation.

>
> It violates my intuition - but I don't claim to be an economist.

A "Business" is not a natural construct. It is a device/entity made by
human definition to fit human needs. (Adam Smith again ->) Business should
work like an "invisible hand" to distribute resources where there is the
most need/demand. This only works if the laws of supply and demand are not
being artificially modified - there needs to be choice in suppliers and
there needs to be a balance in power between consumers and providers.

>
> I don't think we should cut off people's toes if they run miles too
> fast, or hit someone in the head if they are too smart until they
> have about a 120 IQ. And I certainly don't think we should limit
> the amount of money an individual or corporation can make. It is
> part of our American way. Russia has effectively found a way to limit
> people's success. Make
> too much money - and you go to jail, for the rest of your life :) No
> thank you.

Are you thick or something? What is difficult about "the purpose of
business is to serve the public good". What does *that* have to do with
communism, especially since it was from the father of capitalist thought.

Your stuff above is *very superficial, ignorant crap*. It is not
"communism" to try and place some controls on business that refuses to
regulate itself - did you think what happened to Union Carbide after Bhopal,
India was fair or unfair? What ever happened to Standard Oil? Why? Enron?
those dirctors made a shit load of money - by your reasoning they should get
medals.

(Just to give you some clue for you political/economic outlook, the opposite
of a free market economy is not communism but a "command economy".
Communism is a model of governance (not a model of economics).

Your quote:

 LTP>Make too much money - and you go to jail, for the rest of your life :)

How about this one. In Australia a company called James Hardie made/makes
building supplies. When the company had irrefutable evidence that their
asbestos product were lethal and were killing there employees, they (snr
management and the board of directors) covered it up so they could keep
selling the product and make money. Are you saying they were doing the
right thing? No? Then you didn't apply much though to your position did
you? You tacitly admit the usefulness and need of business regulation but
you don't allow it into your reasoning.

This is the thing I hate most about Microsoft - and you can try to work out
their business model as we go In the recent past in places like eastern
europe and more recently China, Microsoft have publicly stated that they
will not enforce their copyrights on their products. The result is everyone
uses Microsoft - sounds good doesn't it. The bad part is there is no way
for any indigenous company to produce business related software, so there is
no competition to Microsoft (this would not be so much of a problem if
Microsoft was a good corporate citizen).

Now what I'm going to tell is not hypothetical - it has actually happened.

When businesses have built up a large investment in data and documents all
formatted for Microsoft products, they have nowhere else to go, they must
use Microsoft and now Microsoft has decided that it will enforce its
copyrights in Easter Europe.

Do you see the business model? It is the same one the drug dealer uses.
Its free, right up until the point you have no choice and then you have to
pay and pay and pay.

To make Microsoft serve the public good, it needs to be broken up and the
board of directors band from sitting on boards and public office. Lesser
court ruling have not worked.

"Its free, right up until the point you have no choice and then you have to
pay and pay and pay."
Received on Sat Oct 15 04:38:12 2005