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.
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
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
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.