Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Shooters, Ire, Boldness
Alternate title: Natural Born Fraggers JamesColburn writes: "I just noticed your article on the 5th anniversary of Quake. I spent much of last year with a couple of friends making a 40 min documentary on the game, the gamers and pro game playing ... Broke my bank. But it was worth it."
Are there prizes for other letters, too? gagganator writes: "If you thought that American aiming for space was headed for the darwin awards, check out this brit who seems destined to beat him (to the darwin awards, that is)."
The ten-million dollar X-prize is a pretty good incentive for early adopters, but I might wait until Boeing has done a few test flights, introduced frequent flyer miles, etc, rather than just sit among four strapped-together rocket engines.
If you must draw conclusions, draw them like this. Sudderth writes: "Scott McCloud has posted a reaction to the 'backlash' against his online comic about micropayments."
McCloud wrote and drew what is probably the best explanation of and argument for micropayments as applied to comics (in two parts -- here are the slashdot posts about the first and second parts) that I've ever seen. Seems like not everyone agrees.
On the other hand you have Tycho, who has had the idea of living off his art come falling down around his ears, at least for the short term. Hell, it's a reasonable expectation to hope to make money from creativity, and the fact that it doesn't always work is quite possibly the SUCKIEST thing about life. Into this comes Scott with his happy ideas and his bright vision of the future, and Tycho in understandable frustration lashes out with his excellent comic, making the point that IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK!
That's cool. I think it's what Scott wants to see: people engaging him about his ideas, and in a medium he loves. But Tycho's rant was a bit harsh against Scott as a person, and Scott's understandably hurt by that, just as Tycho's hurt by Scott's ain't-online-comics-wonderful attitude. The idea of Scott as some self-proclaimed spokesman is particularly laughable, as I'm sure he'd love to see other people come out and speak their minds. Yes, it's important to not steal time from the art by talking about it too much, but a certain amount of discussion can feed back into creativity.
No, I don't think Scott is God or god. Neither is Tycho. Both of them are artists that I respect a lot. And I think they have a hell of a lot to say to each other (displomatically!). I hope they get the chance to say it.
Scott's "end-run around conservative comic book publishing houses" is being attempted because he isn't making any money from them. Read what he actually wrote. Pay attention to the phrase "utility cut-off notices."
McCloud's original source of ongoing income was Zot! it was never a huge seller, just a critical success, and it hasn't been a regular title for, what, nearly a decade now. Do you really think the royalties from Understanding Comics are so amazingly wonderful the man has no need to work, and is just advocating micropayments so he can get a few extra bucks?
The whole spat really comes down to the fact that Jerry decided to take the fact that Scott has an offline name for himself as an excuse to wage an ill-informed holy war. Jerry's condition relative to Scott has nothing to do with the validity of Scott's argument. Jerry didn't even seem to have read the argument very closely, as Scott's response pointed out. (Your comment suggests you didn't read Scott's response very closely, either.)
I can see both points of view, but I have a lot more time for Jerry's.
--
Forget about micropayments, that's a waste of time. Let's work on Microbills. Mine seem a little too Macro lately.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
You can't downgrade someone's honest work because they are more successful, and if anything good comes out of this discussion guess what, Jerry and the other slammers will benefit too.
The tech is all there and that isn't news to anyone here. The point is that lots of attempts have been made, from 1st Virtual on up to e-Gold, and still we don't have anything in place that is going to get volumes of low-cost artistic product out to tens of thousands of people, using a system which matches the way the people want to be able to select and acquire such a product.
There are some experiments going on with prepaid cards that might work in limited geographical settings (thinking about something in downtown Tokyo recently). It also might work if the phone company or cable company offered you say 5 bucks a month that you could use in 500 content transactions to get at a large amount of stuff you want and couldn't get any other way (maybe McCloud makes a special comic for that purpose for example). Maybe Amazon.com would even want to get into that kind of business (you buy a $10 credit and they handle the micropayments), at least McCloud's reference to a single click for a small transaction certainly makes sense. Also I've seen floppies sold in little artsy shops, and perhaps you could store a few of McCloud's comics on a floppy for instance, though you still have to get it in a store and that is pretty low volume for a physical, atoms-not-bits product.
All these things are not purely technical problems, and we already have enough technology to deal with it. I found McCloud's latest comic to be well done, thought provoking even for someone who has been considering micropayment systems to artists and acceptance of lossiness.
One data point I'd like to add. I showed a DJ friend of mine the article by Courtney Love from last year about the record industry and artists. I ran some ideas I had for a lossy payment system which seemed to match what she was talking about (and happens to cover a number of points McCloud covered too).
I was surprised that my friend was totally unsympathetic to her, his attitude being that she and other bands just signed stupid contracts. Now this guy has a day job and I don't think he has ever gone through the kinds of things Courtney Love was talking about, so this kind of response is kind of take-it-or-leave-it. But it struck a chord when I read about the attacks on McCloud; other artists would never be forced to use some payment system they didn't want, but they and everyone else (except record companies perhaps) would have lots to benefit by promoting an open and frank discussion about alternative systems that could allow a larger number of people to make a living off of creative pursuits.
I'm going to keep thinking about this but one thing that would help is to get more real-life data points to use in designing my system and also in convincing someone to fund it. The mention of $600 a month for a 30,000 visitor per month site is very valuable. More please!
Problem is there are already happy little laws in place so if your credit card number is stolen, you are only responsible for, at most, $50 worth of charges. Most credit card companies won't even charge you that. Also with credit cards you can dispute the charges and not pay them. None of that's built into checking. It could be, but I suspect that Congress is so buddy-buddy with the credit card companies that they won't see fit to do that.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Today on Junkyard Wars, our contestants have to build a rocket of death, to propel one team mate to an unbelievable height, with certain death - and the smashing Junkyard Wars trophy - as their only rewards.
For the blue, we had the Bodgers... with their expert Rocketman. They all said "Bollocks to this" and left, leaving Rocketman by himself.
Amazingly enough, the pink team, the NERDS, are all still here - but they insist that it's their expert who will be the only one in the capsule.
You know the rules... you have until sundown (or the FAA calls the whole thing off)... GO!
We will have a manned rocket vehicle flying by the end of the year, but it will be a modest little thing. The performance will only be about what you got out of the old Bell rocket pack, but it is fully fly-by-wire (and can be tested remotely) with active stabilization, and all the subsystems are directly scaleable to much larger vehicles.
I will probably enter as an X-Prize competitor at that point.
John Carmack
Armadillo Aerospace
His efforts to date have used HPR hobby motors. His highest flight to date is 20,000ft: you could get to 30,000 with two of those Aerotech motors (the K700 reload as a booster, and the J570 reload as a sustainer), add two fiberglass tubes, two Acme fincans, a nose cone, and a Blacksky timer in the interstage coupler/reducer, and you've trashed his "record" for about $700.
Look at his "rocket" for fuck's sake: what is the point of that steep reduction behind the nose section, especially when it expands to about the same outside diameter at the booster base! I guess the "large penis shape" is a proven aerodynamic design. Who cares about all those annoyong wind tunnel tests that show a reducer of more than 10 degrees or so will just delaminate the airflow?
Who is correct? At this point, it's difficult to tell. Some detractors would argue that micropayment technology presents an undue intrusion into existing content distribution model. Micropayment technology is a revolutionary alterance in the existing capacity of authors to receive payment; it alters the capacity for content distribution in ways that our current economic structure and techonological understanding may not be prepared to accomodate. Perhaps glitches in this untested process may condemn the concept of micropayments to a footnote in computing history.
Supporters, on the other hand, say that micropayments are an important step forward for computing and publishing. With previous payment schemes, users could not take advantage of the most important technological benefits gained from modern-day information research. Micropayments, they say, opens the proverbial floodgates by allowing the every-day users to pick and choose what they pay for.
There is some probably some merit to both viewpoints. Certainly, commerce as a whole will encounter some friction as it shifts to accomodate the capacity and access provided by micropayments. However, the end result may be worth the infrastructural shifts; existing payment schemes may not be as structurally capable as their newer cousin.
Will micropayments sink or swim? The question is still up in the air; with many unique forces and viewpoints at work, we'll likely see many interesting challenges and confrontations for the pioneers in the online content field. Whatever the final result is, it's sure to give the key players on all sides of the issue a trial by fire.
First off, the person paying the money has to have a credit card to begin with. Even if you're unAmerican and pay off the balance of your card every month, they'll still find ways to turn a profit off of you, even if it means selling your name out to advertisers ("We at Discover Card thought you might be interested in...")
And then to access the credit card's proprietary network infrastructure in order to GET a payment, you either need to set up an account with the credit card people directly, or (which is more likely for people looking for micropayments) go throgh another middleman like Paypal. Either way costs the payee money as well.
So what do I think would be a better alternative? We have OpenPGP (which still seems quite secure), we have electronic signature laws on the books... how about e-mailing a check?
First off, checking accounts cost the payor inherently less, because it's dealing with money the bank already has (and can earn interest off of), as opposed to the lending-on-the-spot concept of credit cards. As for the payee, the only fees that come along for them are bounced check fees from their bank (which can be passed along back to the payor if agreed upon).
Imagine this: You send an e-mail to whoever you want to send money to. You include your street address, unique check number, "pay to the order of" stuff, routing number... all the stuff you'd include in a real check. For the signature, you use a private key for which your bank has access to the public key specifically for that purpose. The recipient needs only forward the document on to their bank to have the check deposited.
Beyond that, the only thing that a real check would have and this one wouldn't would be copy protection. The only threat from copying is doctoring the copy (the bank isn't going to process check #512 twice). Doctoring is prevented by the signature process (hashing). If you're still a little squeamish, you make the signature time-sensitive according to taste.
If after that, you still aren't sure about using one of these, either you have no faith in encryption algorythms, or you're too paranoid to use a paper check to begin with.
It's cheaper for the payor, it's cheaper for the payee, it's cheaper for the bank (automate the whole thing and fewer warm bodies need to be employed to read my chicken-scratch handwriting), and digitally signing the "paperwork" instantly makes it more secure than most on-line credit card transactions.
Or I could be talking out of my ass again and I should go back to playing StarCraft. :) Though I'm now considering talking to my bank and asking what they think of electronic signing like this...
"the Thunderbird capsule is actually a converted cement mixer, containing sheets of hardboard and a few computer joysticks."
Man if he does make it up there, I can tell you who will win in traffic mix-ups. Would you get in the way of a guy using an Atari to drive a cement mixer?
Me neither.