Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!encore!bzs@encore.com
From: bzs@encore.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT's BIG 3.5" mistake.
Message-ID: <4003@encore.UUCP>
Date: 25 Oct 88 23:09:49 GMT
References: <4192@pitt.UUCP> <12670004@eecs.nwu.edu>
Sender: news@encore.UUCP
Reply-To: bzs@encore.com (Barry Shein)
Organization: Encore Computer Corp
Lines: 61
In-reply-to: gore@eecs.nwu.edu (Jacob Gore)

>>The scheme has several advantages: ... (2) developers
>>would actually get paid for every active copy ...
>
>Oh no, they wouldn't.  They would get paid for every DORMANT copy, since it
>will tie the software down to a workstation.
>
>There've been a lot of postings here that visualized a lab of NeXT machines
>where a student can just walk up to any workstation, insert their own
>optifloppy, and use it.  If software is tied down to an Ethernet address,
>either the student has to carry their own CPU card also (since that's where
>the Ethernet port is) (hmmm.... interesting ARP implications here :-), or
>EVERY workstation has to be licensed for all possible software.
>
>So, you get exactly the same situation that is prevalent now in the
>networked world: software vendors charging you per seat, whether that seat
>is occupied or not.  (For example, the company that puts "The Network Is
>the Computer" on every glossy they produce, then proceeds to multiply all
>their software prices -- purchase as well as maintenance -- by the number
>of "terminals" on that "computer".)
>
>Yuck!!!!
>
>Jacob Gore				Gore@EECS.NWU.Edu

I *think* you missed the point here. The student wouldn't pay for the
software until s/he wanted to use it, it would be on there more or
less for free (unless your point is that the $50 cost of the disk is
an issue?)

S/he would then call a phone number and give a charge card number for
the magic cookie and the card number would be charged. I don't know
that the ethernet address was at all relevant, it could just as easily
be a serial number imprinted on the disk to be read to the operator.
It's not like authentication is a big issue, you are going to get
charged for the software, right?

What *I* don't understand is that this is supposed to be attractive
due to its "instant gratification" aspect (ie. you suddenly got an
urge for that game tucked away in there? Just run over to the phone
and have it released!) BUT, a lot of software really requires manuals
to get started with.

I guess manuals can be had (perhaps some would be down at the campus
bookstore, in a bull-pen, the library or borrowed from a friend), but
if you have to wait for them to ship manuals the software may as well
be in the same box in many cases, then again that begs the original
question about distribution media, I'm sort of off on a slightly
different topic (as much as I am enticed by Mathematica, for example,
when I sat down to it w/o a manual I couldn't figure out how to do
even the smallest thing, not a criticism!!!! just that I needed a
manual or some way to know that a semi-colon or whatever was needed at
the end of an expression and what a legal statement looked like, there
may have been on-line help I missed.)

Other than that, it still makes perfect sense to me, just that some
folks were emphasizing the instant gratification aspect which seems
small to me in most cases (maybe it would start a trend towards more
"getting started" docs right on the disk, released with the software
when the magic cookie is presented, sure, why not?)

	-Barry Shein, Possibly Rambling At, ||Encore||