"The book contains many compound adjectives lacking hyphens, just as there are a few complete statements incorrectly separated by commas and not semicolons."
This "no dollar value assigned" argument has been around for as long as Slashdot. Nothing new here. Which is pretty sad IMHO. Anyone who thinks that the lack of clearly assigned dollar value is the key factor driving down the perceived value of Linux has their head deeply buried in the sand - or something darker and smellier.
Switching OSes is hard (duh). I'd argue that little about the perceived (note to flamers: not actual) value of Linux really justifies this cost. Linux poorly markets why it is better (many of the commonly offered reasons are only relevant to developers and extreme power users), offers little support for transition, and provides a constant ongoing challenge to find suitable applications. This site talks about the "hidden costs" of Windows ad naseum, but rarely, if ever, the not so hidden costs of Linux. What exactly is the perceived value a user is supposed to have that is so powerful it is worth the pain of switching? I can clearly articulate that for Apple -- I'm sure all of you can too. No wonder they are stealing the entire early-adopter pro-sumer community that technology revolutions depend on. I'm sorry, "Linux, it's like Apple, only less-polished, no-itunes, fewer apps, and more work to deal with" is just not that compelling. Even if you add "way cheaper and more flexible and philosophically superior." If you want to actually win more than a tiny fraction of desktop sales, it's not enough to be better than windows, you have to beat it into a pulp (so that switching is a no-brainer), then be at least marginally better than Apple (so the switch goes to Linux, not Apple as currently), and then market that fact well enough that most people actually know it and believe it (head to head against Apple -- good luck!).
This article is a waste of time. And anyone serious about evangelizing Linux who thinks that the price tag is more than a second or third order effect on adoption is really wasting their time.
People keep pulling this ruling back to the spectrum auction, but that is relevant. If you RTFA, the ruling was about whether cable operators carry analog, not whether it is broadcast.
Actually, you can make a pretty good argument that the incentives in a de-regulated power market are not necessarily aligned with maximum uptime; so yes, the free market certainly contributed to the North America blackout, and could contribute to others in the future. On the other hand, the language the story submitter used is reminiscent of the increasingly popular 'globalization is evil' luddism rhetoric that drives me absolutely bonkers.
The only definition of decruft I could find had to do with pulling unnecessary characters out of text strings. Why would you do this to a keyboard, or, moreover, a mouse?
It is a neat thought experiment -- certain books are in enough demand that they could drive widespread adoption of whatever medium was necessary....
On the other hand, the economics to the publisher will never bear this out. E-books aside, realistically, the publisher could publish the book at a $299 cover price and many people would buy it, but they won't make nearly as much as they would for a $29.99 hardcover.
The thought experiment gets much more interesting if some vendor with a vested interest in establishing an e-book standard buys an exclusive publishing agreement with the publisher. You'd need to do that deal with an author who cares more about money and less about children than Rowling, however.
I hope that screamondaemon is aware that the CEO of WorldCom isn't exactly representative of the US Government. The spot sounds to me like a bunch of network owners (those who have the most to lose from even friendly hacking) utilizing the national situation to further their own anti-hacking ends. "Please mister hacker, secure my system for free -- we all have to unite against terrorists after all."
On the other hand, I don't exaactly think that a bunch of vigilante crackers is going to do more good than harm, so I'm not really against the message of the ad.
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 1
Personally, I have gradually been coming to the conclusion that US policy towards the Isreali-Palestine conflict is seriously backwards. The Isreali policy of shoot second, but twice as often, does not sit well with me, and will never bring about peace. However, now is the *WRONG* time to think about changing policy towards Isreal. Foreign policy cannot be dictated by terrorism.
It is clear to me that the best long term solution to terrorism is probably 'get people to stop hating the United States [or whichever other place/country you are in].' But, in the short term, political gains that are perceived as consquences of terror can only increase the terror. In other words, I think the US should pursue a gradual softening of it's policies in the Mideast, but that softening should be set back by years for each terrorist act (only that can't be public, because such a policy may provide incentive to some groups...).
IBM has committed $1B to making Linux a successful commercial platform. How does IBM envision supporting ongoing Linux development and Open Source development in general? In other words, will IBM continue to rely on the Open Source Community to keep IBM's R&D costs low, or do they plan to create a feedback mechanism that, financially or otherwise, compensates the community for its work? For example (hypothetically), if IBM needs special work done to the Linux Kernel to enable some advanced DB2 functionality, how does that work get done? Internally at IBM, or externally through the community? Furthermore, in what direction do dollars and IP rights flow within either scenario?
There was a sentence in the AP story about 'customized video highlights'. Somehow, if the video broadcasts cost me, that doesn't bother me - just so long as audio remains free. Living in Boston that has been true on TV for a long time. to get many games on TV you have to subscribe to NESN, a pay cable channel, but all those games are broadcast on WEEI radio for free.
If audio requires payment, I find that just depressing. Commercials should be more than enough to cover the costs of audio broadcasts.
I don't think that this thesis is particularly well developed. In fact, the counter-thesis could be equally, if not better, defended by each of teh examples you chose. The real heroics in The Matrix and in Gattaca are triumphs of humanity over technology. This is not a new trend either, Star Wars and Blade Runner fit right in, as does 2001, Dune, and nearly any Isaac Asimov theme.
The Schwarzenneger and Stallone characters may be neolithic in behavior, but they are actually much more technology driven (in the sense that technology is almost always good and that technology is _always_ useful to them).
How does Steven Seagal and Exit Wounds fit in? I have no idea, but then again, I didn't write this article.
I can't believe that this comment is moderated up to 5. It shows a dramatic lack of understanding of business and human nature. I love it when people say things like 'If they don't return, well, they probably aren't all that interested anyways.' Maybe that is how things should be, but it sure as hell ain't how they are.
A few counter examples:
The obvious one: the company sells large ticket items that don't get purchased every thirty days.
A subtler one: maybe the company introduces a new category of product. A customer who has been there before and had a good experience may not know about the new product category. They don't need any more of the thing they bought before, but they would love to buy the new thing at a store that served them well in the past.
A human one: people forget stuff all the time. If you don't have a strong brand, and you don't market to your previous customers, they will get confused and forget about you.
That is just one area of fallacy. Let's examine the comment "On the other hand, most likely the companies in question actually WANT to sell it off because thats less money they'll have to come up with later to cover the debts after bankrupcy if any."
Companies DO NOT care how many of their debts they cover in bankruptcy. That is what bankruptcy means! Debt forgiveness! The creditors do care, and they take legal action to prevent the destruction of assets that could conceivably provide value. Your 30 day system would be doing just that, and a smart creditor would try to stop it (and a smart company would never have done it anyway).
The solution to this problem is _exactly_ the one the FTC has pursued; we have here a rare case of successful government regulation. Collect the data, keep the data, use the data in accordance with the promises that you made to your customers, then if the data must be sold, the data still must be used in accordance with the promises that you made to your customers. That is admittedly tough to enforce, which is why the ultimate settlement led to the destruction of the data.
Free Cell on the other hand can be solved easily by a computer simnply by using the brute force method.
maybe, but I heard that no one has successfully proven that all possible free cell boards are solvable, so the problem can't be that simple.
what the hell is polynomial time?
on
Does P = NP?
·
· Score: 1
as a non-cs guy, I find this discussion very interesting and informative. several people have done a good job explaining the difference between P, NP, and NP complete -- but all the definitions are based on a term that makes no sense to me at all 'polynomial time'. Can anyone help?
the interesting thing about this con is how irresponsible the VC's were. They saw an opportunity to fleece some virginian rube, and they wanted to move so fast that they didn't perform the most basic due dilligence on either the technology or the management team. As near as I can tell, the VC's (and I guess the people that invested in them) were the only ones who got hurt.
I think the VC's got what they deserved, and I feel far worse for the victims of Stanley's original investment con.
I think this discussion is overly focussed on how volunteer developers should deal with corporate influence. A better question is how the corporate guy should interface with the volunteers.
To use this case as an example, to the extent that Corel really is getting 'something for nothing' from the KDE developers, it is in their best intrest to try to steer the project while rocking the boat as little as possible. Basically, the guy coming in and making a bunch of demands before he proves his worth is a total bonehead.
I'd like to hear more from some of the volunteer developers what type of support they _do_ want, and how corporations could interact with them more effectively.
Let's stipulate that there is hardware company X who has belief and faith in open source development/support. The real advantage open source could bring from a hardware companies perspective is reducing support costs on the peak of lifecycle products.
They don't really care about the obsolete products -- as others have pointed out they want you to buy the new thing. If they are smart at all they also don't have much leftover inventory that they need to get rid of. In other words, there is little advantage to open sourcing obsolete products, and several disadvantages that are described elsewhere.
If I were going to try to sell this idea to hardware company X (stipulated to believe in open source, if you remember), the key would be using obsolete hardware as a test case for the current stuff. Let's think of a bunch of reasons why open sourcing hardware standards will lower the costs of support for the manufacturer -- but they don't want to risk their next big hardware release on an 'unproven' support methodology; so let's use obsolete hardware to test and prove that open source tactics are capable of improving hardware profitability.
This is a fascinating subject. I believe that everyone can agree that publishing (esp. in the fiction/popular non-fiction realm) is one of the most ritualized, old-guard, old-boy networked, inflexible, and downright inefficient (the worst criticism available in this stock market age) industries that exists today. That is not the fascintating part, the fascinating part is how to change it.
I don't think that 'interactivity' itself actually answers that question very well. However, it is a framework to start looking at things from.
I'm going to start from what occaisionally (at least on Slashdot) seems like a radical premise -- the next generation of publishing should define a significant portion of its success through how much money it makes. I am frightened of the day when all writing is interactively done for free. While the best books are never the ones that make the most money, at least the money carrot exists and talented writers don't need to take on a second job.
In nearly any industry, the internet has shaken up the traditional structure through a process of innovation. Only in rare cases has this innovation come from within the giant companies that were most ideally situated to take advantage of the industry changes. Instead, small, nimble startups have scampered to the top and changed people's perspective. I think that rather than criticising the publishing companies, deserving as they may be, it may be more productive to wonder why this 'scampering' has yet to occur in publishing.
Now, I can't claim to have any particular insight into the publishing industry, but I have given this problem enough thought to know that there is no simple solution. Unless you already consider Slashdot and other media sites to be the shakeup, it is very hard to envision a better way to make money out of the writing that goes into books than what the publishing industry is (and has been for years) doing. I have a few uneloquent reasons why:
1) Book technology is very useful technology 2) Even with the web, the distribution and marketing of books is non-trivial 3) Despite the newfound technological feasibility of interactivity, interactivity is still hard! Anyone who grew up reading 'choose your own adventure' books knows this. I used to prefer reading these cover to cover -- it was more fun to try to identify the different threads and map the thread strucutre in my head then to flip pages and read an 'interactive' but cheesy story. 4) Much of reading is to understand one author's view of the world, introducing new voices for the sake of interactivity is a wonderful way to approach current events (e.g., Slashdot), but a painful way to approach fiction.
Therefore, I come to the following challenge: how the hell should these silly, stone age, clearly inefficient publishing companies make money in a better way than they do now? Or better yet, how can a small nimble competitor step in and steal the show? (If you can tell me _that_ I may look for a change in career...) Damned if I know the answers to those questions, but I'm pretty sure that those answers are more relevant to the future of publishing than simnple criticism of the status quo.
Slashdot Mirror
"The book contains many compound adjectives lacking hyphens, just as there are a few complete statements incorrectly separated by commas and not semicolons."
really?
This "no dollar value assigned" argument has been around for as long as Slashdot. Nothing new here. Which is pretty sad IMHO. Anyone who thinks that the lack of clearly assigned dollar value is the key factor driving down the perceived value of Linux has their head deeply buried in the sand - or something darker and smellier.
Switching OSes is hard (duh). I'd argue that little about the perceived (note to flamers: not actual) value of Linux really justifies this cost. Linux poorly markets why it is better (many of the commonly offered reasons are only relevant to developers and extreme power users), offers little support for transition, and provides a constant ongoing challenge to find suitable applications. This site talks about the "hidden costs" of Windows ad naseum, but rarely, if ever, the not so hidden costs of Linux. What exactly is the perceived value a user is supposed to have that is so powerful it is worth the pain of switching? I can clearly articulate that for Apple -- I'm sure all of you can too. No wonder they are stealing the entire early-adopter pro-sumer community that technology revolutions depend on. I'm sorry, "Linux, it's like Apple, only less-polished, no-itunes, fewer apps, and more work to deal with" is just not that compelling. Even if you add "way cheaper and more flexible and philosophically superior." If you want to actually win more than a tiny fraction of desktop sales, it's not enough to be better than windows, you have to beat it into a pulp (so that switching is a no-brainer), then be at least marginally better than Apple (so the switch goes to Linux, not Apple as currently), and then market that fact well enough that most people actually know it and believe it (head to head against Apple -- good luck!).
This article is a waste of time. And anyone serious about evangelizing Linux who thinks that the price tag is more than a second or third order effect on adoption is really wasting their time.
People keep pulling this ruling back to the spectrum auction, but that is relevant. If you RTFA, the ruling was about whether cable operators carry analog, not whether it is broadcast.
Actually, you can make a pretty good argument that the incentives in a de-regulated power market are not necessarily aligned with maximum uptime; so yes, the free market certainly contributed to the North America blackout, and could contribute to others in the future. On the other hand, the language the story submitter used is reminiscent of the increasingly popular 'globalization is evil' luddism rhetoric that drives me absolutely bonkers.
The only definition of decruft I could find had to do with pulling unnecessary characters out of text strings. Why would you do this to a keyboard, or, moreover, a mouse?
I didn't buy it because the reviews sucked, and because it didn't seem like enough of a departure from 'Play' to be interesting.
On the other hand, I don't steal music.
It is a neat thought experiment -- certain books are in enough demand that they could drive widespread adoption of whatever medium was necessary....
On the other hand, the economics to the publisher will never bear this out. E-books aside, realistically, the publisher could publish the book at a $299 cover price and many people would buy it, but they won't make nearly as much as they would for a $29.99 hardcover.
The thought experiment gets much more interesting if some vendor with a vested interest in establishing an e-book standard buys an exclusive publishing agreement with the publisher. You'd need to do that deal with an author who cares more about money and less about children than Rowling, however.
I hope that screamondaemon is aware that the CEO of WorldCom isn't exactly representative of the US Government. The spot sounds to me like a bunch of network owners (those who have the most to lose from even friendly hacking) utilizing the national situation to further their own anti-hacking ends. "Please mister hacker, secure my system for free -- we all have to unite against terrorists after all."
On the other hand, I don't exaactly think that a bunch of vigilante crackers is going to do more good than harm, so I'm not really against the message of the ad.
Personally, I have gradually been coming to the conclusion that US policy towards the Isreali-Palestine conflict is seriously backwards. The Isreali policy of shoot second, but twice as often, does not sit well with me, and will never bring about peace. However, now is the *WRONG* time to think about changing policy towards Isreal. Foreign policy cannot be dictated by terrorism.
It is clear to me that the best long term solution to terrorism is probably 'get people to stop hating the United States [or whichever other place/country you are in].' But, in the short term, political gains that are perceived as consquences of terror can only increase the terror. In other words, I think the US should pursue a gradual softening of it's policies in the Mideast, but that softening should be set back by years for each terrorist act (only that can't be public, because such a policy may provide incentive to some groups...).
IBM has committed $1B to making Linux a successful commercial platform. How does IBM envision supporting ongoing Linux development and Open Source development in general? In other words, will IBM continue to rely on the Open Source Community to keep IBM's R&D costs low, or do they plan to create a feedback mechanism that, financially or otherwise, compensates the community for its work? For example (hypothetically), if IBM needs special work done to the Linux Kernel to enable some advanced DB2 functionality, how does that work get done? Internally at IBM, or externally through the community? Furthermore, in what direction do dollars and IP rights flow within either scenario?
>1) Why would anyone pay for an internet broadcast when radio is free?
Maybe if you don't live in your favorite team's region? I used to live in London and I could _only_ follow the red sox via the Internet.
There was a sentence in the AP story about 'customized video highlights'. Somehow, if the video broadcasts cost me, that doesn't bother me - just so long as audio remains free. Living in Boston that has been true on TV for a long time. to get many games on TV you have to subscribe to NESN, a pay cable channel, but all those games are broadcast on WEEI radio for free. If audio requires payment, I find that just depressing. Commercials should be more than enough to cover the costs of audio broadcasts.
I don't think that this thesis is particularly well developed. In fact, the counter-thesis could be equally, if not better, defended by each of teh examples you chose. The real heroics in The Matrix and in Gattaca are triumphs of humanity over technology. This is not a new trend either, Star Wars and Blade Runner fit right in, as does 2001, Dune, and nearly any Isaac Asimov theme.
The Schwarzenneger and Stallone characters may be neolithic in behavior, but they are actually much more technology driven (in the sense that technology is almost always good and that technology is _always_ useful to them).
How does Steven Seagal and Exit Wounds fit in? I have no idea, but then again, I didn't write this article.
I can't believe that this comment is moderated up to 5. It shows a dramatic lack of understanding of business and human nature. I love it when people say things like 'If they don't return, well, they probably aren't all that interested anyways.' Maybe that is how things should be, but it sure as hell ain't how they are.
A few counter examples:
The obvious one: the company sells large ticket items that don't get purchased every thirty days.
A subtler one: maybe the company introduces a new category of product. A customer who has been there before and had a good experience may not know about the new product category. They don't need any more of the thing they bought before, but they would love to buy the new thing at a store that served them well in the past.
A human one: people forget stuff all the time. If you don't have a strong brand, and you don't market to your previous customers, they will get confused and forget about you.
That is just one area of fallacy. Let's examine the comment "On the other hand, most likely the companies in question actually WANT to sell it off because thats less money they'll have to come up with later to cover the debts after bankrupcy if any."
Companies DO NOT care how many of their debts they cover in bankruptcy. That is what bankruptcy means! Debt forgiveness! The creditors do care, and they take legal action to prevent the destruction of assets that could conceivably provide value. Your 30 day system would be doing just that, and a smart creditor would try to stop it (and a smart company would never have done it anyway).
The solution to this problem is _exactly_ the one the FTC has pursued; we have here a rare case of successful government regulation. Collect the data, keep the data, use the data in accordance with the promises that you made to your customers, then if the data must be sold, the data still must be used in accordance with the promises that you made to your customers. That is admittedly tough to enforce, which is why the ultimate settlement led to the destruction of the data.
Free Cell on the other hand can be solved easily by a computer simnply by using the brute force method. maybe, but I heard that no one has successfully proven that all possible free cell boards are solvable, so the problem can't be that simple.
as a non-cs guy, I find this discussion very interesting and informative. several people have done a good job explaining the difference between P, NP, and NP complete -- but all the definitions are based on a term that makes no sense to me at all 'polynomial time'. Can anyone help?
thanks.
sorry, my physics degree is only a BA...
the interesting thing about this con is how irresponsible the VC's were. They saw an opportunity to fleece some virginian rube, and they wanted to move so fast that they didn't perform the most basic due dilligence on either the technology or the management team. As near as I can tell, the VC's (and I guess the people that invested in them) were the only ones who got hurt.
I think the VC's got what they deserved, and I feel far worse for the victims of Stanley's original investment con.
I think this discussion is overly focussed on how volunteer developers should deal with corporate influence. A better question is how the corporate guy should interface with the volunteers.
To use this case as an example, to the extent that Corel really is getting 'something for nothing' from the KDE developers, it is in their best intrest to try to steer the project while rocking the boat as little as possible. Basically, the guy coming in and making a bunch of demands before he proves his worth is a total bonehead.
I'd like to hear more from some of the volunteer developers what type of support they _do_ want, and how corporations could interact with them more effectively.
Let's stipulate that there is hardware company X who has belief and faith in open source development/support. The real advantage open source could bring from a hardware companies perspective is reducing support costs on the peak of lifecycle products.
They don't really care about the obsolete products -- as others have pointed out they want you to buy the new thing. If they are smart at all they also don't have much leftover inventory that they need to get rid of. In other words, there is little advantage to open sourcing obsolete products, and several disadvantages that are described elsewhere.
If I were going to try to sell this idea to hardware company X (stipulated to believe in open source, if you remember), the key would be using obsolete hardware as a test case for the current stuff. Let's think of a bunch of reasons why open sourcing hardware standards will lower the costs of support for the manufacturer -- but they don't want to risk their next big hardware release on an 'unproven' support methodology; so let's use obsolete hardware to test and prove that open source tactics are capable of improving hardware profitability.
This is a fascinating subject. I believe that everyone can agree that publishing (esp. in the fiction/popular non-fiction realm) is one of the most ritualized, old-guard, old-boy networked, inflexible, and downright inefficient (the worst criticism available in this stock market age) industries that exists today. That is not the fascintating part, the fascinating part is how to change it.
I don't think that 'interactivity' itself actually answers that question very well. However, it is a framework to start looking at things from.
I'm going to start from what occaisionally (at least on Slashdot) seems like a radical premise -- the next generation of publishing should define a significant portion of its success through how much money it makes. I am frightened of the day when all writing is interactively done for free. While the best books are never the ones that make the most money, at least the money carrot exists and talented writers don't need to take on a second job.
In nearly any industry, the internet has shaken up the traditional structure through a process of innovation. Only in rare cases has this innovation come from within the giant companies that were most ideally situated to take advantage of the industry changes. Instead, small, nimble startups have scampered to the top and changed people's perspective. I think that rather than criticising the publishing companies, deserving as they may be, it may be more productive to wonder why this 'scampering' has yet to occur in publishing.
Now, I can't claim to have any particular insight into the publishing industry, but I have given this problem enough thought to know that there is no simple solution. Unless you already consider Slashdot and other media sites to be the shakeup, it is very hard to envision a better way to make money out of the writing that goes into books than what the publishing industry is (and has been for years) doing. I have a few uneloquent reasons why:
1) Book technology is very useful technology
2) Even with the web, the distribution and marketing of books is non-trivial
3) Despite the newfound technological feasibility of interactivity, interactivity is still hard! Anyone who grew up reading 'choose your own adventure' books knows this. I used to prefer reading these cover to cover -- it was more fun to try to identify the different threads and map the thread strucutre in my head then to flip pages and read an 'interactive' but cheesy story.
4) Much of reading is to understand one author's view of the world, introducing new voices for the sake of interactivity is a wonderful way to approach current events (e.g., Slashdot), but a painful way to approach fiction.
Therefore, I come to the following challenge: how the hell should these silly, stone age, clearly inefficient publishing companies make money in a better way than they do now? Or better yet, how can a small nimble competitor step in and steal the show? (If you can tell me _that_ I may look for a change in career...) Damned if I know the answers to those questions, but I'm pretty sure that those answers are more relevant to the future of publishing than simnple criticism of the status quo.
wouldn't surprise me if someone decides to bring down th currents.net site with an unusual 'windows-based' slashdot effect.
Not that I would suggest such a thing.