Re: How do I write directly to a memory address?

[Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>]

On 2/9/2011 2:48 PM, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> Look how MS was punished!

If they prospered, it was because the perceived benefits of
using their work outweighed the perceived flaws.

> How many new OSes were developed in recent 20 years (0).

Linux and its Android offshoots, Symbian, iOS, Palm OS.

> Name one SW company getting revenues from compiler sales (0) .

AdaCore!

> Develop a component library and sell it. How much would you earn (0).

My wife pays thousands of dollars a year to (now) IBM for the
CPLEX optimizer library which she uses in her product.
<http://www-01.ibm.com/software/integration/optimization/cplex-optimizer/>

> Can you earn anything by selling a device driver?

Apparently Thesycon thinks so:
<http://www.thesycon.de/usbio/usbio_win_pricelist.pdf>

What is the point of this, anyway? Some business models make
money in certain environments, and others do not. The is no
entitlement that it should be possible to make money developing
and selling software. Some people can, some cannot.

> Now consider the following statement. The most complex and expensive (in
> terms of invested man-years and know-how) software is given away for free
> or far under the real costs. OSes, compilers, numerical libraries, OCR,
> drivers etc. You can sell only something simple, which one specific
> customer needs because he cannot do it by himself and you could hack it in
> a couple of months. Who pays for this banquet?

The people who are choosing to give it away, by finding other
business models which bring in money to offset the development
costs. I could say that the most brilliant acting performances,
the most hilarious comedy, the most deeply felt tragedy, the
most imaginative science fiction, the most suspenseful mysteries
are all created by an industry that then simply flings them to
the world for free on the air waves. Who pays for this banquet?

>> Socialization of software costs comes when governments fund software
>> development.
>
> by buying Windows licenses.

No, that's false. That is buying an existing product. If the
vendor chooses to use that money for further development, that
is not the same as the government directly funding development
of products that do not yet exist. When a government office
buys a stapler, that does not mean that the government is
funding the development of better staplers. Money is fungible.

> Government is a dwarf playing no role on the would-be-market
 > of software.

The failed FAA project <http://www.teamlalala.com/blog/category/faa/>
cost some 3.7 billion dollars. Various failed IRS projects have cost
over fifty billion dollars. That's a smallish piece of the total market,
but it's plenty large.

>> Many of those attempts fail precisely because of the
>> lack of market forces pressuring the developers.
>
> Forces are lacking because there is no software market at all.
 > It became a monopoly long ago.

Long ago? Microsoft has only been a public corporation for
twenty-five years! OS/2 was being actively promoted by IBM
twenty years ago. There are hundreds of millions of smart
telephones currently active, each vastly more powerful than
the PCs of that long ago, all running non-MS software. And
there is an enormous market for game software on a variety of
platforms. One such game, Call of Duty: Black Ops, brought in
over one billion dollars in sales. The game World of Warcraft
has twelve million subscribers each paying a monthly fee ($13
in the US).

Just because it may not be profitable to do what you want to
do in the way that you want to do it is no reason to believe
that there are no business models from which to earn money
developing and selling software.

> Who does inspect MS?

The world community, through reports and reviews. Even hackers
play their part, hastening the repair of problems by exposing
users and thus MS to risk.

> Who does the ECU of your car? Have you heard about the crash assistant
> built in there? Do you have a steer by wire system? Brake by wire?

The manufacturer, the NHTSA, and even NASA. And we know, because of the
extended investigations into the Toyota sudden acceleration problems,
that the systems are working properly:
<http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/nvs/pdf/NASA-UA_report.pdf>

> Have you eaten another Windows?

Over the years I have used version after version of Windows as I
changed computers, and I have found them all suitable to task. I
currently use Windows 7 and it works fine.

>> If, nevertheless, the steak is infected, I may get sick.
>
> Who will pay for that? And who pays for Windows damages?

My health insurance company, to whom my employer and I pay
premiums against such an eventuality. Windows damages, such
as they are, are paid by the people who are damaged.

>> But I
>> would find it unreasonable to submit each piece of food I was
>> about to eat to a laboratory procedure to prove its safety.
>
> This tells about the level of acceptable risk.
>
> Now the problem with software is that any risk is considered acceptable and
> nobody is liable. With the food if you get poisoned, or merely fat (like in
> the McDonald's cases), you may get a huge compensation exceeding the cost
> of one steak in the proportion of one to 10**7. For the software you cannot
> even get your money back. You call it a functioning model?

Certainly. It functions quite well. You know where else I can't get
my money back? If I go to a restaurant and the food is lousy, or I
go to a show and the acting is dreadful. It's all a matter of business
models.