Seth Godin, commented on the abuse of free sauce packets at McDonalds by a few that ruins it for the many. While I understand the frustration of the situation it also would be a good idea to understand what’s happening in these cases… it may not be well known but a practise of homeless people is to horde sauce packets to make tomato soup.
That changes things.
The indignation soon is replaced by concern, but the problem remains… at least you are a lot closer to solving the real problem.
September 14, 2007
Seth Godin captures the thoughts of Jon a New Zealander that there is a very real tendency to gravitate to a warm blooded human voice wherever possible. Then I got to thinking….
What if a blogger featured a constant realtime feed to their blog, where a visitors presence was notified to the blogger (by a door open chime like in a store front) and they introduced themselves to the visitor and invited a chat or better still a skype conf… and as soon as the demand exceeded the bloggers capacity to support additional blog concierges could take over… got me thinking… maybe I can get a prototype going… please comment here if you would like to try something like this out… Im willing to do the work if there is enough interest.
April 18, 2007
Seth Godin rightly opines regarding automated computer responses to enquries:
“There’s a middle ground, one that is not computer-decided. It’s based on a human being treating another human being the way they’d like to be treated.”
This very issue is, I believe, at the heart of the DRM debate… DRM debate?
My point. Anyone who makes a living from intellectual property knows the value of keeping your rights as author, but DRM has become a whipping stick to force the law abiding public to accept unreasonable software licensing terms.
Someone who buys a $50 piece of software or even a $300 copy of Windows should not be expected to invest the time and energy into understanding and thinking of the ramifications of a twenty page user agreement… (that box we all click when we install the software binding us to who knows what).
Fair use should cover us… the licence is between the publisher and me.. Im the buyer… not the computer… and if I want to use it on my 10 PCs then thats ok.. its me using my software on 10 machines… Microsoft or anyone else should not stop me, the same way as i should be able to photocopy a chapter from a book I bought and read it on the train.
As an inventor in the space, and a key DRM patent under my belt… I should know. Technology can be used to help people do the right thing… it IS smart enough to let a consumer use the software on their own 5, 10 or even 15 machines but also detect when a kid has shared the software with their whole dorm… or the bittorent community… copy control is not the problem… publisher greed is…
April 10, 2007
