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After I wrote that, I realized the better scenario is a person's web server. A web server has hosting and maintenance fees, but might get sufficient ad revenues to cover that cost. After the owner dies, you essentially have this living entity consuming and earning.

The only advantage the trading model has over the web server model for discussions, is that you could imagine a program running a simple stock analysis tool that that has the preprogrammed goal of maximizing profit...making it more lifelike.

And the point of the post was that this type of scenario can exist with today's technology. It is not dependent on making a computer come to life.

BTW, here is an absurd tale of what will happen when the cows wake up

the piece is being carried by just about everyone.

Paper printouts are still the most standardized mechanism for communication. I could see the university's hope that by requiring computers, they create another standardized mechanism for communication.

But I have to admit, the impulse to print is strong. In the info age, printing is an activity that makes you feel like you are actually doing something. It is odd working 12 hour shifts at a desk and having nothing that physically represents the days' work. Just changing the pattern of 1s and 0s on a hard disk is an odd way to make a living. Printing the web page makes it look like you did something.

[ctrl-p] look at 10 page print out of /. jabber and file under My Contribs to the Universe.

I agree, stuffing the viral marketing concept into software was a horrid mistake, and is a major reason why I avoid the GPL issue. Look at all the white noise created by the people trying to force this thing down everyone's gullet. One of the main complaints of theKompany was the incessant humming caused by GPL rants, source code requests, etc.. I understand the desire to be able to focus on ideas and work, and not this type of stuff.

Quote from the article:

I think far too many people spend far too much time and mental energy tied up in license discussions when their creativity and focus could be spent building something fantastic for themselves or maybe the community.

If I wanted to waste my life yammering about legalese, I would have gone to law school and make more money. Have you notice how lawyers tend to strut about blabbering about their great altruism, and some seem to sneak out the back door with all the cash. GPL is just another case showing that people feigning altruism generally have a deeper greed than the people they denounce.

I've given out a great deal of code. Released stuff into the public domain, etc.. But I would never touch the GPL just as I try to avoid forwarding email with virii. If I give something away, I do so because I want to help increase the knowledgebase (some times just cause I am an egotistical snob) but never because I want to spawn a revolution.

BTW, I dislike the viral nature of other licenses as well. A lot of contracts have this nasty effect. Having a non-disclosure agreement in one contract will force its way through other contracts. If your code encapsulates someone elses code, then your license has to encapsulates the other license. In just about all cases, however, the legalese ends up diverting attention from the problems to be solved to pure power mongering. TheKompany has x amount of altruism. They want to spend that on the community. The people people pounding at the door demanding the souce code were simply playing power mongering games.

I have to agree with Shawn Gordon. Life is too short to waste it on chain letters and GPL.

kd

I really like the idea of launching class action law suits against spammers...that way every time I receive a spam, it will be followed immediately by emails from lawyers asking if I want to sue the person who spammed me.

It's like trying to fit a round cat through a square hole

I am actually surprised by the number of times people send out email not knowing who will receive it or the number of people in their CC list. Most email clients don't let the end user see how much damage they have done. The goal of a developer is to give the users the power to get their job done, but so often you find people are clueless on what the power is or how to use it.

Personally, I would like to see email merge with databases. With a good relational DB, it is easy to show users what's gone through the pipe and how many emails your company has sent to a client, etc.. You can integrate the email into your CRM, etc. You can also place constraints on the system that can prevent this type of mailing list abuse that generates so much unwanted garbage.

Working with pure email clients (sendmail, exchange, whatever) seems to be like trying to fit a round cat through a square hole.

Personally, I like the overture concept (they used to be Goto.com). Quite frankly, I believe there needs to be some mechanism to monetize the net, and pay per click search engines seems to be a less intrusive mechanism than banner ads.

The main reason I like it is from a game theory perspective. Self organizing systems tend to optimize themselves. In general, web sites will only bid on keywords that are relevant to their service. As a result, the pay per search engines should end up with more relevant results.

That is in theoary. Of course, only the sites that sell a product can afford a listing on Goto. That means you will see the same site over and over again, while purely information sites cannot compete.

Web sites can make a little bit of money from Goto. You sign up for their engine, then put a link on your site. Overture will pay you $.02 for each paying search from your site. You would have to have 1000 searches from your site to make $20. They used to pay $.03.

In theory this could be a nice way for small web sites to off set their costs, but like so much of the web, I believe overture has turned its back on the small sites. I believe they pay the larger sites something like $.10 per click and small sites .02.

I prefer to use Google, but I think it is really worthwhile to have a sites that "monetize" the net. When they first opened, the minimum bid was a penny, and they paid three cents for a click. So I made this page and bid a penny on the term "goto". I paid Goto $35 for hits, and made $50 from clicks back to goto. Okay...so maybe the product wasn't quite sustainable for goto at that point. They raised the bid to a nickel, and dropped the payment to $.02...so the game was no longer any fun.