O software poses a serious challenge to proprietary software vendors. “Lock in customers” seems a tempting strategy for proprietary software vendors, who attempt to lock in customers by creating switching costs. This paper examines whether such a lock-in strategy will indeed benefit proprietary software vendors facing competition from open-source software, who can credibly commit future prices....

Although one is unlikely to ever want to brute-force an Android lock pattern, many do wonder about the relative strength of the lock pattern versus a multi-digit personal identification number (PIN). It becomes obvious pretty quickly that there are many more lock patterns than the 10,000 possible four-digit PINs. Figure 1 Android lock pattern screen But, how many lock patterns are there? The of...

Switching costs, the real or perceived cost of changing product providers, has become increasingly important in information-intensive businesses. Reduced search and transactions costs have made it possible for customers to more readily evaluate alternative suppliers, increasing switching. At the same time, the high fixed cost structure of customer acquisition and operations in information-inten...

A review of the literature reveals that the concept of diversity (and especially technological diversity) is of considerable general significance in economics. Diversity is variously argued to be a major factor in the fostering of innovation and growth, an important strategy for hedging against intractable uncertainty and ignorance, the principal means to mitigate the effects of 'lock-in' under...

We describe a basic experiment for the undergraduate laboratory that demonstrates aspects of both the science and the art of precision electronic measurements. The essence of the experiment is to measure the resistance of a small length of brass wire to high accuracy using a simple voltage divider and a lock-in amplifier. By performing the measurement at different frequencies and different driv...

People often experience tension over certain choices (e.g., they should reduce their gas consumption or increase their savings, but they do not want to). Some posit that this tension arises from the competing interests of a deliberative ‘‘should’’ self and an affective ‘‘want’’ self. We show that people are more likely to select choices that serve the should self (should-choices) when the choic...

2014 We have performed experiments on the onset of turbulence in liquid 4He, as a function of the Prandtl number (0.4 Pr 0.8), for a series of cells of confined geometry with two convective rolls. For a low value of Pr the dynamic behaviour is similar to our previous studies, i.e. two frequencies followed by lock-in and subharmonic bifurcations of the lowest frequency, before the onset of turbu...

The fitting of security devices to motor vehicles has become an important approach to the prevention of motor vehicle crime. In cars, manufacturers have focused primarily on improving perimeter security to prevent breaking-in to the vehicle, and installing devices to prevent parked vehicles from being unlawfully driven away. The steering column lock Is an Important example of this approach, bei...

Internet of Things (IoT) has become a phenomenon in many researchers. A smart digital automated system based on IoT plays major role which helps reducing human work by applying interaction technology daily life. This research introduces the Smart Door Lock where smartphone uses Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) to activate door lock. By using Android software, will automatically lock within specific ra...

Lock preemption is a common problem with twophase locking. While a transaction is still active, its locks may be preempted to avoid a deadlock or to satisfy the lock request of a higher-priority transaction. In general, the victim of preemption is aborted. This paper suggests that the victim could be continued and its work up to preemption could be saved if the preempted lock is restored on its...