"Chances are, it's a quote taken out of context or a wholesale fabrication by a reporter."
Actually, chances are, it's not. Chances are the reporter recorded the interview and that the editors and legal councel for the paper reviewed the entire piece before it was published. Chances are you know absolutely nothing about about how the news is created, and chances are you never even read the text of the interview in question...
Steve Ballmer said:
"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works."
Basically, he's saying something that is entirely consistant with what Microsoft has been saying about the GPL lately... that businesses shouldn't use any open source software that uses GPL because the GPL requires that they give away all the software they develop.
This, of course, is a obvious misrepresentation of the GPL license. If it's not blaintant pro-Microsoft FUD, I don't know what is...
Maybe it's just me, but I can't tell you how bored I am with all the "real time" games out there. I mean, really... the very principals of real time gaming fly in the face of reality and bore me to tears.
- Create a base (without any real settlers or colonization, and with no hardships.)
- Gather and control as many resources as possible (without any regard to alliances, roads, infrastructure...)
- Build a huge army (without regards to how expensive it is to support, feed, supply, etc. said army, or the morale of those who send them into war.)
- Swarm enemy...
The tragedy of these games is that they take compelling stories and slap them on like cheap coats of paint over the same old tired concept. 3D graphics be damned... who gives a rats ass if I'm playing the same old game?
I want to be in the game... I want it to feel like a real world. Real time games could do this, but they rarely ever do. What's the point? It makes about as much sense as rushing out and buying Quake 37 to replace your old, outdated copy of Quake 36...
I'm not sure I would call "The Hobbit" a huge hit. Almost all the copies it sold were for the TRS-80, I believe.
HHGTTG sold over 350,000 copies on numerous platforms, which was an enormous amount for a game back then.
Although generally known for creating humorous books about satire, science fiction, and the ludicrous nature of the human condition, there was a lot more to Adams that is worth mentioning... He was a skilled social satirist and a very forward-thinking writer, advancing the concepts of what writers could do.
He helped create the first "hit" computer game based on a novel, helped ignite the whole "books on tape" trend, brought his stories to radio and television, helped create the rich, computerized environment of "Starship Titanic" and the concept of a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"--a massive collection of obscure hyperlinked information (before the www existed) displayed on a small handheld computer (before PDAs existed). He also created the idea of the babel fish--a universal translator, essentially.
Just by writing a good yarn, he helped spur change in the world around him that has benefited all of us. We all owe a lot to the guy and to the kind of changes that one "good read" can bring. Thanks, Doug.
I actually visited Arcosanti just last weekend... very interesting place/very ambitious project, but it needs corporate and governmental support, IMHO.
I think that the premise of the article's author is pretty ludicrous.
He is, in effect saying:
"Small, tasteful ads don't work... and bigger, less tasteful ads won't work... so lets force people to sit through huge, massively annoying ads instead."
The real truth is that banner ads do work... they just don't work well enough to pay the salary of a whole giant staff of writers, managers, and execs with dotcom aspirations. Even more true is the fact that we are literally surrounded by advertising these days... far more than ever before. We have many more choices too... hundreds of channels, thousands of magazines, and a Google of websites. Still, the amount of viewers hasn't grown to keep up with the growth of all these advertising choices.
What would you call it if a government based a currency on gold, but then printed tons and tons of funny money to build all sorts of things they couldn't otherwise afford? What would be the effect? Inflation. That is the real problem with advertising everywhere... the cost is horribly inflated.
Those involved in advertising vehemently deny this, of course. Advertising is like a currency unto itself... usually it involves selling air. Sometimes paper... sometimes bits and bytes. It's a currency, in that it has little inherent value unless we believe it does.
Advertising today is more expensive than ever. Back in the '60s, you could produce and air a nationwide ad for a few thousand dollars, show it during Gunsmoke and get, say, 25% of the country to see it. Today, you can spend a million dollars and you're lucky if you get a fraction of the response.
In other words, inflation. The ads are the currency, and we are the gold that backs the currency up. The growth of the potential audience for advertising and of the standard of living for that audience hasn't kept up with the number of ads... by all rights, advertising should be less expensive than ever, and all the web statistics out there are pointing out this fact.
The real problem is that the emperor has no clothes, and that, through statistics, the advertising industry has intentionally overvalued the true value of advertising across the board. They've even built up a dogmatic school of thought which makes questioning the value of advertising a traitorous act. The point of fact is the value of advertising does not equate to the salary of overpaid ad execs, producers, designers, focus groups, etc... it equates to the return on investment. As a business, I want to spend $2 and get $3 back... but with advertising, and especially with online advertising, you're lucky sometimes if you spend $10 and get $1 back.
At the site I help run, we rely on memberships for funding. So far, it looks like we will make about 50 cents per user per year based on our business model. We also find that we get about 35% more growth by being banner ad free, which also translates into additional income. Being member supported doesn't prevent us from making additional revenue from potential business partners, either.
One last point... Take, for example, the excellent web-based cartoons at Spumco... If you had long, funny, animated ads created by some great talent, you'd expect a lot of success, right?! Well, that never really materialized... If John K., a person who has won numerous awards for both animation and advertising, can't make web-based advertising work, why should it work better for anyone else? If you must go begging for money, why not go straight to the source?
It's worth pointing out that AT&T/Northpoint, by cutting off access to over 100,000+ former Northpoint customers, is not just stranding residential customers, but a huge amount of businesses and even a few online communities. Looks like trex.org, one of the Silicon Valley's oldest online communities, had their connectivity yanked.
The essential truth here is that AT&T is acting in a way that indicates that they wanted all those people to lose their connectivity. People will have an irrational fear of DSL in general, so they will use cable instead... nevermind that cable is generally not a secure connection, and is inherently less able to guarantee performance levels due to the fact that all their customers share bandwidth. For uses such as telecommuting, IT departments rightfully prefer DSL access.
The cost of allowing a reasonable transition for Northpoint's customers would have been far, far less than what AT&T paid for Northpoint, and the cost of the extra service they provided could have been charged to whatever service they transitioned the line to. Everyone knows that in order to give these users a realistic chance of switching over, they should have been given about a 60 day warning period.
Is it just me, or should the FCC protect consumers better in situations like this by requiring an adequate transition time in such circumstances? Personally, I'd do something... I'd sign a petition or write the FCC (address at bottom of their webpage) so that this kind of rapidfire corporate liquidation doesn't happen again.
Mule was not only a tremendous multiplayer strategy game, it was also one of the first to simulate economies and market forces. Well, that and lemonade...
His games were deceptively simple to play, but amazingly rich in design. For instance, the world map creation feature in Seven Cities of Gold was a true marvel in design, and in many ways has never been rivaled. Compare it, for instance, to the creation of worlds in Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri, for instance. As amazing as Sid is, he has no doubt learned a few things from Dan.
Seven Cities of Gold created intricate worlds that took into account weather, geography, the flow of rivers, the mood of the native tribes, morale, and the awe and amazement of seeing Conquistadores for the first time. Absolutely amazing design for the time... it is frankly astonishing to me that games so detailed, elegant, and beautiful could be created on such computers.
As for me, I think I will go home now and play some Mule... beats yet another shoot-em-up any day.
I am the business manager of livejournal.com, and for us, banner ads were a losing proposition.
We are a website for user-created communities and online journaling. At one point, we tried banner ads on all non-member journal pages. What we discovered was that we had about 25% fewer new users due to banner ads. The amount of money we received from banner ads was a very small proportion of what we received from memberships. It became obvious to us that for every quarter we were making, we were annoying 1000 other people.
We have since removed banner ads, relying instead on funding from our members. We have also encouraged goodwill by moving towards open sourcing all our software and encouraging users to help support and develop the site.
The results? We have received about $30,000 in member donations in the past 5 months or so, have over 100 volunteers, and have 65,000 users, doubling in size every three months.
It's worth pointing out that the sites who really make money on banner ads aren't the tiny "mom & pop" websites. To really make money on banner ads, you need to be big enough that you can offer advertisers very specific, pinpointed demographics. As the demise of so many dotcoms has shown, banner ads in and of themselves do not constitute a stable, scalable business model.
While I admit that many if not most online journals can be tiresome to read, I would hardly call them either pointless are useless. Here are some of the plusses of online journaling for the average person.
1. Maybe they'll learn something. I manage an online journaling community and have met relative novice web users who have gotten journals... suddenly, they're all curious about basic html, design, writing, etc. Next thing I know, they start to have a site as good as mine... which leads me to think that they have entirely too much time on their hands. Soon enough, they become useful, confident members of our community and have some talents that are actually of value in this world.
2. They become a part of the user base. Like it or not, every successful website needs a user base. In LiveJournal's case, we're member supported, so more users = potential paying members. Gotta keep those servers humming.
3. Their posts are of interest to people other than yourself. Did it ever occur to you that someone might write a journal for a reason other than to entertain you? Maybe they do it for personal reasons, or maybe they do it as a way of sharing their lives with their friends. Either method is valid and is of interest to the right person.
4. Journals breed familiarity. When even marginal writers create a journal, it allows others a chance to know them, determine if they are of interest, and basically feel like there is a real person on the Internet somewhere connected to their posts. This is important, because it creates a stronger community. I think most people are kind of sick of the anonymous nature of so much of the Internet. Take Slashdot, for example. How many stupid posts would never be written if the author realized that their posts might actually be >>gasp! associated with how people perceive them. Everyone and their dog complains about how "the Government is going to search the web and find out all about me." Which begs the question: do you really think the Feds care about you? They can't even prevent spying in the highest levels of the FBI, where they can use routine polygraph tests! Rather than complain about injustices you can't prove, why not complain about the real injustices we all deal with daily, like having to read painfully bad posts?
Know all the fine details of my life... fine. I have nothing to hide. Just don't expose me to stupidity.
A highly inaccurate history lesson, actually...
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Your history lesson isn't accurate.
In June of 1998, Brad Fitzpatrick created a method to update an online weblog without having to manually upload files to his website, bradfitz.com. At first, his solution was fairly primative, using a simple web-based client. Eventually, Brad shared this method with a few friends, and created livejournal.com. On March 18th, 1999, Brad created a software client to post his journal from. You can read the post here.
LiveJournal soon had hundreds of users and multiplied in size rapidly. Brad, never really promoted the site much, so it took awhile to catch on outside of the Pacific Northwest. He never tried to make Livejournal into a commercial entity unlike Blogger and Pitas/Diaryland.
Since then, we have changed (and grown) a lot in a short amount of time. The site is now much more of a community-driven site and largely run by over 100 volunteers. We currently have around 65K users, doubling in size about every three months. We are financially supported by about 1300 members, and have received about $30K in
funding for server upgrades and colocation costs over the last 5 months or so.
Re:Is this the web equivalent of flashing?
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I am Mark... I basically help run LJ. I can tell you that journals can be very good and very positive for the people who use them. I have known people who have used their journals to get over real problems in their lives, and have completely turned things around, so yes... I think they are very valuble. Many therapists would agree, since they have been recommending journals for a long time to deal with tough personal issues.
Are they right for everyone? Probably not... but there is no reason that you have to use journals for exhibitionistic purposes, either. I use community based journals to organize events, get work on the site done, talk about special interests, and basically interact with my friends. So... what's the harm in that?!
m.
The problem with Blogger is that they are more interested in making a successful business model (which is going to be hard to do in this economy) than in helping the weblogging community. Unlike LiveJournal and Greymatter, Blogger's software is entirely proprietary, I believe.
Evan Williams, the sole employee left at Blogger, put it this way after laying off all his employees: "I just had to drastically scale down the plan for immediate world domination." On Pyra's website, he puts it as wanting to "turn Blogger into a successful business. Not a hobby. Not a volunteer-run organization."
Seems to me that Blogger is kind of the Microsoft of weblogs. I'm not saying their software sucks, but this is one relatively new software field where open source apps can become the dominant players, so choose wisely before weblogging really becomes important to people.
LiveJournal... and Why Weblogs Matter
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Hi... I'm Mark, a.k.a. insomnia, the "All-things-business" manager at LiveJournal, which was mentioned in the article.
First, a bit about LiveJournal. We are a site with around 65,000 users, doubling in size every three months. Unlike Blogger, we are a free interactive online community created, designed, and supported by the people who use it.
LiveJournal enables its users to easily create online journals and communities. Updating your journal or community is as simple as typing into a software client or web browser screen and hitting submit... no html is needed, and spell checking, linking, and adding images to your journal is standard for all our major software clients. We have clients for every platform I can think of practically... Linux? PalmOS? BeOS? No problem. Since LiveJournal volunteers design, expand, and constantly improve the site's features, we expect to develop open source community-based applications at an increasing rate.
Why are weblogs important? Well, any new idea has a novelty phase, where people say "Neat, but what can it do?".. there are serious business applications for weblogs. For instance, LiveJournal uses its own communities, such as lj_dev and lj_biz to organize the sites' business and development efforts. I know that these communities are a great alternative to organizing groups with maillists; LiveJournal communities have about 15 times more posts per user per month than comparable maillist communities, according to our statsistics. If you also figure in that you can add other web-based applications as part of your community, such as chat, planning, calendar, and organization-oriented applications, maillists and Usenet-like solutions start looking pretty dated.
If you think about it, all weblogs really are is a modern-day adaptation of Usenet for web browsers. Weblogs can be used for numerous purposes, such as journals, communities, and weblogs... but ultimately, their real value to people is when they are connected together, allowing people to interact.
Our long-term goal is an Internet where websites are much more dynamic than today... where you can essentially add the content and the people that interest you to a friends list. Want to add your favorite musician to your friends list and hear their latest songs over the Internet? How about your favorite underground comic strip? As you can see, there are applications that are far bigger than just reading your friends journal. We have the opportunity to create a uniquely open source kind of media that isn't controlled by the powers that be. Unlike push technology (that pushed ads on your desktop) you can have customized webpages designed to keep you connected with the latest entries from your friends, in communities, websites (such as Slashdot), and some of the most interesting people all over the Internet.
So, yeah. Weblogs are important if you think that the ability to fundamentally change the nature of the Internet matters.
Curious? Interested? Want to help develop something great? Feel free to visit our site, or drop me an e-mail. I'd be glad to hear from you.
The comments on this issue seem to be another case of the dumbing down of Slashdot. Seriously, folks... if you don't know anything about what is going on and can only spew FUD, do us a favor and save the bandwidth.
I worked for Covad in a position that gave me a unique perspective in where the company was going and what their business plan was. Fortunately, I got out last year when I saw warning signs, months before the axe fell. What has happened is just a symptom of a fundamental shift in the marketplace.
Covad was the first major CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) in the DSL marketplace. CLECS were essentially created by the Telecommunications Act of '96. Basically, the Telecommunication Act allowed two main changes in the law:
1> It allowed for local phone companies to offer long distance service.
2> It allowed for CLECs to exist, essentially using phone company lines for a fair market value. It made the right for phone companies to offer long distance contingent on them opening their lines up fairly for CLECs to do their job.
Covad started in the San Francisco bay area, fertile ground for a DSL company. They were first in the market, with about a 6 months lead on Northpoint and Rhythms when it came to their number of subscribers and their ability to roll out services effectively. They have done a good job of maintaining that lead, too.
Originally, DSL companies competed for business locally... but when the glut of investment capital came rolling in, it became obvious that there was a huge demand for broadband and not enough supply. The way that DSL companies dealt with this was to spend billions on rolling out their networks and putting equipment in as many central offices as possible. In many cases, these central office deployments were redundant... Small marketplaces would have the choice between 2-3 CLECS, plus the local phone company in order to get DSL.
Why were companies like Covad willing to put equipment in locations that wouldn't return a profit anytime soon? Because, in a bull marketplace with a glut of investment capital, what was going on was essentially a landgrab. The first person to "drive their stake" into a marketplace and to get their message across would be the dominant player in that market... eventually. How could they be sure? Because, once people have DSL, they don't want to go back to dialup, and they rarely ever switch DSL providers.
As we all know, the stock market soured and the venture capital money has dried up for the time being. Now, the stakes are higher for these companies... they either have to achieve profitability before their warchests run out (say, 18 months for Covad and Rhythms)or they have to sell out all or part of their business to their current phone company competitors.
When I was at Covad last year, I could tell you... they brought on a ton of people, constantly. They developed an absolutely annoying, gluttenous amount of middle management in no time flat. The people who really knew anything were stuck in meetings all day and weren't able to get anything done, and there were a lot of new people who were very inefficient, often causing more work than they were performing.
In other words, I'm glad that Covad has laid off so many of these new workers. I'm glad that they're willing to pull the plug on deadbeat customers... and I'm glad they are willing to remove equipment from locations that just don't pay. I am certain that Covad will be the first CLEC to achieve profitability... and profitability will give them the creds to get back in the favor of investors and VC's... the first to reach profitability gets to grow again, essentially.
Not that Covad won't grow this year... it will concentrate on what gets them the bucks: business installs easy residential customer self-installs. If you want to be profitable in a short amount of time with a DSL company, you can't be rolling out a install truck a half-dozen times just to set up a line for a customer paying $45 a month. That's why self-installs are so important. Covad has great testing and line qualifying equipment. They can easily determine whether a residential customer's line is able to be handled with a self-install or not. If it is, they do the deal, if not... let the local phone companies pay to fix up their crappy lines! Covad has been very successful with their self-install program, which gives them an edge over Rhythms in this respect.
Covad also is and has been very successful with business customers. Business customers are very important, and the DSL lines offered to business customers bring in more revenue and more profit than residential customers. If you want to maximize profitability, you have to concentrate on businesses first.
What are the longterm ramifications of the DSL CLECS falling on hard times? Probably this:
1> Some CLECs won't survive. Some will sell out to local phone companies, too.
2> Phone companies will get a larger proportion of the DSL marketplace than they might otherwise have gotten.
3> In the short term, there will be less of an incentive for broadband providers to compete with each other on a price level. Don't expect price cuts anytime soon on broadband. Demand still outstrips supply.
4> DSL will take somewhat longer to catch up with the growth of cable-based broadband in the U.S. All statistics still point to DSL access growing faster than cable broadband access, however. Cable-based broadband is also expensive to roll out service for, and money is tight everywhere. Eventually, DSL should outstrip cable in the marketplace. Let me make one thing clear... there will be no winner in the broadband marketplace until there is a clearly superior technology. Neither DSL or Cable will "win"... but we will see profitable companies in DSL, cable, and wireless.
What should be the biggest concern about this issue for consumers? Ultimately, it's all about choice. Choice means competition and lower prices, after all. It's that much more important to pay attention to the decisions in front of the FCC and Congress and to make sure that the interests of consumers are met and that the marketplace is kept friendly for CLECs and, ultimately, for competition. Normal people can and do influence FCC decisions, and it is worthwhile to point out that some of the worst decisions by the FCC are those that only get a handful of responses from the public. Want to make your opinion actually count? Don't just voice it here. Go to http://www.fcc.gov, keep up on what's REALLY happening, and let your voice be heard on the issues there. The last I heard, it was your government, after all...
Hello/. First, an admission. I work for Covad. Now, a disclaimer... nothing I say here should in any ways be considered the opinion of Covad, or is in any ways representative of Covad. I've been on Slashdot for longer than I've been at Covad... I wanted to let you know what we do at Covad and why you should care. Basically, DSL would not be possible without the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Before 1996, the Baby Bells (ILECs) had no reason to offer DSL, and were quite happy offering extremely expensive ISDN service. They're still trying to protect their ISDN services to business, infact, which probably explains why all the ILECs are out to sell consumer-oriented DSL but really don't push business-oriented DSL much. Covad was the first company that attempted to provide DSL to the public, which is a lot harder than it sounds. Everything having to do with DSL depends upon the ILECs complying with the Telecommunications Act. Sometimes the Baby Bells cooperate... and sometimes they drag their feet. Thankfully, we have a great bunch of lawyers. I have never seen a company where the lawyers are so beloved as here at Covad, since they routinely do battle with the phone companies and come back victorious every time. We may be small, but we routinely prod the ILECs into action. Frankly, DSL businesses wouldn't be able to exist without the legal battles that Covad has fought to get the Baby Bells to comply with the Telecommunications Act. When Covad gets consessions out of the ILECs, everyone wins. One important legal battle that Covad won for consumers is line sharing. Line sharing allows companies like Covad to provide DSL service over your existing phone line. The end effect for consumers is that they can obtain DSL much more rapidly and at a greatly reduced price. Line sharing also opens up the possibility for customers to install their own DSL in the future. DSL also promises cool new technologies, such as Voice over DSL (VoDSL). Would you like to get phone service from your ISP? It may not be as far off as you would think, and that means competition... which means that we all save money. I have read many of the posts here and have let the appropriate people in the company here know about this thread. Obviously, some of the issues people have mentioned are phone company(ILEC) issues, some are ISP issues, and, yes, some are problems with Covad. Unlike some bloated phone company, we can and will solve any issues we are made aware of. Trust me, your chances of getting ILEC problems fixed is actually greater when you go through Covad than when you deal with the ILEC yourself. That's why we can and do routinely provide service for people who the ILECs claim can never get DSL. Before you consider buying DSL from your phone company, go to a site like dslreports.com and read the ILEC horror stories first. Scary... What we do at Covad is not easy... we routinely have to get service from the phone companies, which are entrenched and so full of redtape and roadblocks that it is amazing that we can do what we do. One of the hardest things that we do is figure out ways of working with many different ILECs (and ISPs) with many different processes, cutting out the redtape and getting the job done. I can tell you that the processes that we have in place are infinitely better than they were just a few months back. We are gung-ho when it comes to business automation and improving the customer experience. In short, give Covad a break. We can solve your problems if you let us know about them. You won't find another company in the telecommunications industry that is a bigger advocate for competition (which means lower prices) and giving people a choice. I believe that the legacy of what Covad is doing is more important than whether we succeed or fail; when the dust settles, the era of local phone monopolies will be at an end. Covad is on on the right side of history and is changing an entire industry. If I didn't believe that (and didn't believe that Covad will be VERY major player in a huge market) I wouldn't work here.
Everyone is missing the point. You cannot get a good web experience without three things... a real browser that works, a way of entering data/manipulating the browser screen, and a screen big enough to display everything. You are still describing a solution that solves only 1/3rd of the problem... most of us here would settle for 2/3rds.;)
I still believe the solution that will triumph in the end is likely to be a fully-functional, very small computer that runs a real browser and a real OS. It should be able to connect to the internet either over mobile phones or by using wireless. Once such a device comes out, expect the palms to either "bulk up" or become a niche market of diehard fans.
As for the dream machine, the question in my mind is "which OS?"... Linux or Win98? If it is a real PC, I'd suspect both.
"I'm hijacking this thread... take me to Cuba!" On a serious note... I work for perhaps the most influential DSL provider in the world, and here is what I want to tell you. Nobody is paying any attention to Linux. Sure, some of us use it, but for sheer market reasons, we are coming out with lower-cost devices primarily for the PC marketplace. These devices are, in many cases, already dependent upon PPPoE software. And do you think we're taking the time to test/qualify/distribute the software for Linux? Not likely... Still, even the biggest DSL providers only have about 100,000 customers, so if there was a really strong desire from Linux users to get organized and get their DSL, then who would possibly want to refuse that many customers? Linux users can change things, but you will all have to get better organized. Here's how... Take a known quantity with lots of readers in the Linux world, such as Andover/Slashdot, and use them to start providing DSL services. Essentially, you'd make them an ISP in the same sense that bowie.net is an ISP... all the service and installation is outsourced. Once you have that, it would be a lot easier to have a company approach a major DSL player and say "We have 30,000 users who wants DSL... who wants to play with us?" I can't do it for you, but best of luck out there...!
Almost all of the comments I have seen completely miss the reason why Microsoft is doing this deal...
It's the connectivity, stupid! Microsoft has invested millions already into companies that provide cable modems... they have also invested heavily in DSL companies such as Northpoint, who signed a deal with Tandy/Radio Shack to market their wares in Radio Shack.. what that means is that Microsoft's fledgling DSL service can work with Northpoint's national DSL service in offering high-speed connectivity across the nation, and of course the default ISP for these "great deals" will be MSN. Radio Shack will have their own install trucks and personnel to bring DSL to the masses, probably using the newest, most consumer-friendly type of DSL which allows respectable bandwidth and telephone calls over the same line. In other words, Microsoft wants to dominate your desktop, your web browser, your gate way to the net, and even make a profit off of getting you connected.
Contrary to what some people think, DSL is a good thing, and getting a lot better real soon. Sure there is the possibility of fast access on cable modems, assuming that all your neighbors don't want on the 'net too... but do you really want to share your bandwidth (and your "secure" network) with Billy down the street? Already, there is information showing that DSL is faster than cable modems during evening hours. Why? Because little Billy is watching that streaming porn again...
Personally, I hope a lot of you are right and that this flops, but I suspect that many drones will jump on the bandwagon once the price range hits about $40 a month... Hey! They can offer three months of free service with every upgrade to Windows 2000! Whee. The idea of using a good DSL modem to deliver MSN is kinda repulsive, no?!? It's like racing your new sports car with the great paint job over gravel roads. Pretty grating...
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, chances are, it's not. Chances are the reporter recorded the interview and that the editors and legal councel for the paper reviewed the entire piece before it was published. Chances are you know absolutely nothing about about how the news is created, and chances are you never even read the text of the interview in question...
Steve Ballmer said:
"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works."
Basically, he's saying something that is entirely consistant with what Microsoft has been saying about the GPL lately... that businesses shouldn't use any open source software that uses GPL because the GPL requires that they give away all the software they develop.
This, of course, is a obvious misrepresentation of the GPL license. If it's not blaintant pro-Microsoft FUD, I don't know what is...
- Create a base (without any real settlers or colonization, and with no hardships.)
- Gather and control as many resources as possible (without any regard to alliances, roads, infrastructure...)
- Build a huge army (without regards to how expensive it is to support, feed, supply, etc. said army, or the morale of those who send them into war.)
- Swarm enemy...
The tragedy of these games is that they take compelling stories and slap them on like cheap coats of paint over the same old tired concept. 3D graphics be damned... who gives a rats ass if I'm playing the same old game?
I want to be in the game... I want it to feel like a real world. Real time games could do this, but they rarely ever do. What's the point? It makes about as much sense as rushing out and buying Quake 37 to replace your old, outdated copy of Quake 36...
I'm not sure I would call "The Hobbit" a huge hit. Almost all the copies it sold were for the TRS-80, I believe. HHGTTG sold over 350,000 copies on numerous platforms, which was an enormous amount for a game back then.
He helped create the first "hit" computer game based on a novel, helped ignite the whole "books on tape" trend, brought his stories to radio and television, helped create the rich, computerized environment of "Starship Titanic" and the concept of a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"--a massive collection of obscure hyperlinked information (before the www existed) displayed on a small handheld computer (before PDAs existed). He also created the idea of the babel fish--a universal translator, essentially. Just by writing a good yarn, he helped spur change in the world around him that has benefited all of us. We all owe a lot to the guy and to the kind of changes that one "good read" can bring. Thanks, Doug.
I actually visited Arcosanti just last weekend... very interesting place/very ambitious project, but it needs corporate and governmental support, IMHO.
He is, in effect saying: "Small, tasteful ads don't work... and bigger, less tasteful ads won't work... so lets force people to sit through huge, massively annoying ads instead."
The real truth is that banner ads do work... they just don't work well enough to pay the salary of a whole giant staff of writers, managers, and execs with dotcom aspirations. Even more true is the fact that we are literally surrounded by advertising these days... far more than ever before. We have many more choices too... hundreds of channels, thousands of magazines, and a Google of websites. Still, the amount of viewers hasn't grown to keep up with the growth of all these advertising choices.
What would you call it if a government based a currency on gold, but then printed tons and tons of funny money to build all sorts of things they couldn't otherwise afford? What would be the effect? Inflation. That is the real problem with advertising everywhere... the cost is horribly inflated.
Those involved in advertising vehemently deny this, of course. Advertising is like a currency unto itself... usually it involves selling air. Sometimes paper... sometimes bits and bytes. It's a currency, in that it has little inherent value unless we believe it does.
Advertising today is more expensive than ever. Back in the '60s, you could produce and air a nationwide ad for a few thousand dollars, show it during Gunsmoke and get, say, 25% of the country to see it. Today, you can spend a million dollars and you're lucky if you get a fraction of the response.
In other words, inflation. The ads are the currency, and we are the gold that backs the currency up. The growth of the potential audience for advertising and of the standard of living for that audience hasn't kept up with the number of ads... by all rights, advertising should be less expensive than ever, and all the web statistics out there are pointing out this fact.
The real problem is that the emperor has no clothes, and that, through statistics, the advertising industry has intentionally overvalued the true value of advertising across the board. They've even built up a dogmatic school of thought which makes questioning the value of advertising a traitorous act. The point of fact is the value of advertising does not equate to the salary of overpaid ad execs, producers, designers, focus groups, etc... it equates to the return on investment. As a business, I want to spend $2 and get $3 back... but with advertising, and especially with online advertising, you're lucky sometimes if you spend $10 and get $1 back.
At the site I help run, we rely on memberships for funding. So far, it looks like we will make about 50 cents per user per year based on our business model. We also find that we get about 35% more growth by being banner ad free, which also translates into additional income. Being member supported doesn't prevent us from making additional revenue from potential business partners, either.
One last point... Take, for example, the excellent web-based cartoons at Spumco... If you had long, funny, animated ads created by some great talent, you'd expect a lot of success, right?! Well, that never really materialized... If John K., a person who has won numerous awards for both animation and advertising, can't make web-based advertising work, why should it work better for anyone else? If you must go begging for money, why not go straight to the source?
The essential truth here is that AT&T is acting in a way that indicates that they wanted all those people to lose their connectivity. People will have an irrational fear of DSL in general, so they will use cable instead... nevermind that cable is generally not a secure connection, and is inherently less able to guarantee performance levels due to the fact that all their customers share bandwidth. For uses such as telecommuting, IT departments rightfully prefer DSL access.
The cost of allowing a reasonable transition for Northpoint's customers would have been far, far less than what AT&T paid for Northpoint, and the cost of the extra service they provided could have been charged to whatever service they transitioned the line to. Everyone knows that in order to give these users a realistic chance of switching over, they should have been given about a 60 day warning period.
Is it just me, or should the FCC protect consumers better in situations like this by requiring an adequate transition time in such circumstances? Personally, I'd do something... I'd sign a petition or write the FCC (address at bottom of their webpage) so that this kind of rapidfire corporate liquidation doesn't happen again.
Mule was not only a tremendous multiplayer strategy game, it was also one of the first to simulate economies and market forces. Well, that and lemonade...
His games were deceptively simple to play, but amazingly rich in design. For instance, the world map creation feature in Seven Cities of Gold was a true marvel in design, and in many ways has never been rivaled. Compare it, for instance, to the creation of worlds in Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri, for instance. As amazing as Sid is, he has no doubt learned a few things from Dan.
Seven Cities of Gold created intricate worlds that took into account weather, geography, the flow of rivers, the mood of the native tribes, morale, and the awe and amazement of seeing Conquistadores for the first time. Absolutely amazing design for the time... it is frankly astonishing to me that games so detailed, elegant, and beautiful could be created on such computers.
As for me, I think I will go home now and play some Mule... beats yet another shoot-em-up any day.
We are a website for user-created communities and online journaling. At one point, we tried banner ads on all non-member journal pages. What we discovered was that we had about 25% fewer new users due to banner ads. The amount of money we received from banner ads was a very small proportion of what we received from memberships. It became obvious to us that for every quarter we were making, we were annoying 1000 other people.
We have since removed banner ads, relying instead on funding from our members. We have also encouraged goodwill by moving towards open sourcing all our software and encouraging users to help support and develop the site.
The results? We have received about $30,000 in member donations in the past 5 months or so, have over 100 volunteers, and have 65,000 users, doubling in size every three months.
It's worth pointing out that the sites who really make money on banner ads aren't the tiny "mom & pop" websites. To really make money on banner ads, you need to be big enough that you can offer advertisers very specific, pinpointed demographics. As the demise of so many dotcoms has shown, banner ads in and of themselves do not constitute a stable, scalable business model.
1. Maybe they'll learn something. I manage an online journaling community and have met relative novice web users who have gotten journals... suddenly, they're all curious about basic html, design, writing, etc. Next thing I know, they start to have a site as good as mine... which leads me to think that they have entirely too much time on their hands. Soon enough, they become useful, confident members of our community and have some talents that are actually of value in this world.
2. They become a part of the user base. Like it or not, every successful website needs a user base. In LiveJournal's case, we're member supported, so more users = potential paying members. Gotta keep those servers humming.
3. Their posts are of interest to people other than yourself. Did it ever occur to you that someone might write a journal for a reason other than to entertain you? Maybe they do it for personal reasons, or maybe they do it as a way of sharing their lives with their friends. Either method is valid and is of interest to the right person.
4. Journals breed familiarity. When even marginal writers create a journal, it allows others a chance to know them, determine if they are of interest, and basically feel like there is a real person on the Internet somewhere connected to their posts. This is important, because it creates a stronger community. I think most people are kind of sick of the anonymous nature of so much of the Internet. Take Slashdot, for example. How many stupid posts would never be written if the author realized that their posts might actually be >>gasp! associated with how people perceive them. Everyone and their dog complains about how "the Government is going to search the web and find out all about me." Which begs the question: do you really think the Feds care about you? They can't even prevent spying in the highest levels of the FBI, where they can use routine polygraph tests! Rather than complain about injustices you can't prove, why not complain about the real injustices we all deal with daily, like having to read painfully bad posts? Know all the fine details of my life... fine. I have nothing to hide. Just don't expose me to stupidity.
In June of 1998, Brad Fitzpatrick created a method to update an online weblog without having to manually upload files to his website, bradfitz.com. At first, his solution was fairly primative, using a simple web-based client. Eventually, Brad shared this method with a few friends, and created livejournal.com. On March 18th, 1999, Brad created a software client to post his journal from. You can read the post here.
LiveJournal soon had hundreds of users and multiplied in size rapidly. Brad, never really promoted the site much, so it took awhile to catch on outside of the Pacific Northwest. He never tried to make Livejournal into a commercial entity unlike Blogger and Pitas/Diaryland. Since then, we have changed (and grown) a lot in a short amount of time. The site is now much more of a community-driven site and largely run by over 100 volunteers. We currently have around 65K users, doubling in size about every three months. We are financially supported by about 1300 members, and have received about $30K in funding for server upgrades and colocation costs over the last 5 months or so.
Are they right for everyone? Probably not... but there is no reason that you have to use journals for exhibitionistic purposes, either. I use community based journals to organize events, get work on the site done, talk about special interests, and basically interact with my friends. So... what's the harm in that?! m.
You also have an inaccuracy in your post. Livejournal has approximately 65,000 users... not 100,000... yet. Give it another 60 days.
Evan Williams, the sole employee left at Blogger, put it this way after laying off all his employees: "I just had to drastically scale down the plan for immediate world domination." On Pyra's website, he puts it as wanting to "turn Blogger into a successful business. Not a hobby. Not a volunteer-run organization."
Seems to me that Blogger is kind of the Microsoft of weblogs. I'm not saying their software sucks, but this is one relatively new software field where open source apps can become the dominant players, so choose wisely before weblogging really becomes important to people.
First, a bit about LiveJournal. We are a site with around 65,000 users, doubling in size every three months. Unlike Blogger, we are a free interactive online community created, designed, and supported by the people who use it.
LiveJournal enables its users to easily create online journals and communities. Updating your journal or community is as simple as typing into a software client or web browser screen and hitting submit... no html is needed, and spell checking, linking, and adding images to your journal is standard for all our major software clients. We have clients for every platform I can think of practically... Linux? PalmOS? BeOS? No problem. Since LiveJournal volunteers design, expand, and constantly improve the site's features, we expect to develop open source community-based applications at an increasing rate.
Why are weblogs important? Well, any new idea has a novelty phase, where people say "Neat, but what can it do?".. there are serious business applications for weblogs. For instance, LiveJournal uses its own communities, such as lj_dev and lj_biz to organize the sites' business and development efforts. I know that these communities are a great alternative to organizing groups with maillists; LiveJournal communities have about 15 times more posts per user per month than comparable maillist communities, according to our statsistics. If you also figure in that you can add other web-based applications as part of your community, such as chat, planning, calendar, and organization-oriented applications, maillists and Usenet-like solutions start looking pretty dated.
If you think about it, all weblogs really are is a modern-day adaptation of Usenet for web browsers. Weblogs can be used for numerous purposes, such as journals, communities, and weblogs... but ultimately, their real value to people is when they are connected together, allowing people to interact.
Our long-term goal is an Internet where websites are much more dynamic than today... where you can essentially add the content and the people that interest you to a friends list. Want to add your favorite musician to your friends list and hear their latest songs over the Internet? How about your favorite underground comic strip? As you can see, there are applications that are far bigger than just reading your friends journal. We have the opportunity to create a uniquely open source kind of media that isn't controlled by the powers that be. Unlike push technology (that pushed ads on your desktop) you can have customized webpages designed to keep you connected with the latest entries from your friends, in communities, websites (such as Slashdot), and some of the most interesting people all over the Internet.
So, yeah. Weblogs are important if you think that the ability to fundamentally change the nature of the Internet matters.
Curious? Interested? Want to help develop something great? Feel free to visit our site, or drop me an e-mail. I'd be glad to hear from you.
I worked for Covad in a position that gave me a unique perspective in where the company was going and what their business plan was. Fortunately, I got out last year when I saw warning signs, months before the axe fell. What has happened is just a symptom of a fundamental shift in the marketplace.
Covad was the first major CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) in the DSL marketplace. CLECS were essentially created by the Telecommunications Act of '96. Basically, the Telecommunication Act allowed two main changes in the law:
1> It allowed for local phone companies to offer long distance service.
2> It allowed for CLECs to exist, essentially using phone company lines for a fair market value. It made the right for phone companies to offer long distance contingent on them opening their lines up fairly for CLECs to do their job.
Covad started in the San Francisco bay area, fertile ground for a DSL company. They were first in the market, with about a 6 months lead on Northpoint and Rhythms when it came to their number of subscribers and their ability to roll out services effectively. They have done a good job of maintaining that lead, too.
Originally, DSL companies competed for business locally... but when the glut of investment capital came rolling in, it became obvious that there was a huge demand for broadband and not enough supply. The way that DSL companies dealt with this was to spend billions on rolling out their networks and putting equipment in as many central offices as possible. In many cases, these central office deployments were redundant... Small marketplaces would have the choice between 2-3 CLECS, plus the local phone company in order to get DSL.
Why were companies like Covad willing to put equipment in locations that wouldn't return a profit anytime soon? Because, in a bull marketplace with a glut of investment capital, what was going on was essentially a landgrab. The first person to "drive their stake" into a marketplace and to get their message across would be the dominant player in that market... eventually. How could they be sure? Because, once people have DSL, they don't want to go back to dialup, and they rarely ever switch DSL providers.
As we all know, the stock market soured and the venture capital money has dried up for the time being. Now, the stakes are higher for these companies... they either have to achieve profitability before their warchests run out (say, 18 months for Covad and Rhythms)or they have to sell out all or part of their business to their current phone company competitors.
When I was at Covad last year, I could tell you... they brought on a ton of people, constantly. They developed an absolutely annoying, gluttenous amount of middle management in no time flat. The people who really knew anything were stuck in meetings all day and weren't able to get anything done, and there were a lot of new people who were very inefficient, often causing more work than they were performing.
In other words, I'm glad that Covad has laid off so many of these new workers. I'm glad that they're willing to pull the plug on deadbeat customers... and I'm glad they are willing to remove equipment from locations that just don't pay. I am certain that Covad will be the first CLEC to achieve profitability... and profitability will give them the creds to get back in the favor of investors and VC's... the first to reach profitability gets to grow again, essentially.
Not that Covad won't grow this year... it will concentrate on what gets them the bucks: business installs easy residential customer self-installs. If you want to be profitable in a short amount of time with a DSL company, you can't be rolling out a install truck a half-dozen times just to set up a line for a customer paying $45 a month. That's why self-installs are so important. Covad has great testing and line qualifying equipment. They can easily determine whether a residential customer's line is able to be handled with a self-install or not. If it is, they do the deal, if not... let the local phone companies pay to fix up their crappy lines! Covad has been very successful with their self-install program, which gives them an edge over Rhythms in this respect.
Covad also is and has been very successful with business customers. Business customers are very important, and the DSL lines offered to business customers bring in more revenue and more profit than residential customers. If you want to maximize profitability, you have to concentrate on businesses first.
What are the longterm ramifications of the DSL CLECS falling on hard times? Probably this:
1> Some CLECs won't survive. Some will sell out to local phone companies, too.
2> Phone companies will get a larger proportion of the DSL marketplace than they might otherwise have gotten.
3> In the short term, there will be less of an incentive for broadband providers to compete with each other on a price level. Don't expect price cuts anytime soon on broadband. Demand still outstrips supply.
4> DSL will take somewhat longer to catch up with the growth of cable-based broadband in the U.S. All statistics still point to DSL access growing faster than cable broadband access, however. Cable-based broadband is also expensive to roll out service for, and money is tight everywhere. Eventually, DSL should outstrip cable in the marketplace. Let me make one thing clear... there will be no winner in the broadband marketplace until there is a clearly superior technology. Neither DSL or Cable will "win"... but we will see profitable companies in DSL, cable, and wireless.
What should be the biggest concern about this issue for consumers? Ultimately, it's all about choice. Choice means competition and lower prices, after all. It's that much more important to pay attention to the decisions in front of the FCC and Congress and to make sure that the interests of consumers are met and that the marketplace is kept friendly for CLECs and, ultimately, for competition. Normal people can and do influence FCC decisions, and it is worthwhile to point out that some of the worst decisions by the FCC are those that only get a handful of responses from the public. Want to make your opinion actually count? Don't just voice it here. Go to http://www.fcc.gov, keep up on what's REALLY happening, and let your voice be heard on the issues there. The last I heard, it was your government, after all...
Hello /. First, an admission. I work for Covad. Now, a disclaimer... nothing I say here should in any ways be considered the opinion of Covad, or is in any ways representative of Covad. I've been on Slashdot for longer than I've been at Covad... I wanted to let you know what we do at Covad and why you should care. Basically, DSL would not be possible without the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Before 1996, the Baby Bells (ILECs) had no reason to offer DSL, and were quite happy offering extremely expensive ISDN service. They're still trying to protect their ISDN services to business, infact, which probably explains why all the ILECs are out to sell consumer-oriented DSL but really don't push business-oriented DSL much. Covad was the first company that attempted to provide DSL to the public, which is a lot harder than it sounds. Everything having to do with DSL depends upon the ILECs complying with the Telecommunications Act. Sometimes the Baby Bells cooperate... and sometimes they drag their feet. Thankfully, we have a great bunch of lawyers. I have never seen a company where the lawyers are so beloved as here at Covad, since they routinely do battle with the phone companies and come back victorious every time. We may be small, but we routinely prod the ILECs into action. Frankly, DSL businesses wouldn't be able to exist without the legal battles that Covad has fought to get the Baby Bells to comply with the Telecommunications Act. When Covad gets consessions out of the ILECs, everyone wins. One important legal battle that Covad won for consumers is line sharing. Line sharing allows companies like Covad to provide DSL service over your existing phone line. The end effect for consumers is that they can obtain DSL much more rapidly and at a greatly reduced price. Line sharing also opens up the possibility for customers to install their own DSL in the future. DSL also promises cool new technologies, such as Voice over DSL (VoDSL). Would you like to get phone service from your ISP? It may not be as far off as you would think, and that means competition... which means that we all save money. I have read many of the posts here and have let the appropriate people in the company here know about this thread. Obviously, some of the issues people have mentioned are phone company(ILEC) issues, some are ISP issues, and, yes, some are problems with Covad. Unlike some bloated phone company, we can and will solve any issues we are made aware of. Trust me, your chances of getting ILEC problems fixed is actually greater when you go through Covad than when you deal with the ILEC yourself. That's why we can and do routinely provide service for people who the ILECs claim can never get DSL. Before you consider buying DSL from your phone company, go to a site like dslreports.com and read the ILEC horror stories first. Scary... What we do at Covad is not easy... we routinely have to get service from the phone companies, which are entrenched and so full of redtape and roadblocks that it is amazing that we can do what we do. One of the hardest things that we do is figure out ways of working with many different ILECs (and ISPs) with many different processes, cutting out the redtape and getting the job done. I can tell you that the processes that we have in place are infinitely better than they were just a few months back. We are gung-ho when it comes to business automation and improving the customer experience. In short, give Covad a break. We can solve your problems if you let us know about them. You won't find another company in the telecommunications industry that is a bigger advocate for competition (which means lower prices) and giving people a choice. I believe that the legacy of what Covad is doing is more important than whether we succeed or fail; when the dust settles, the era of local phone monopolies will be at an end. Covad is on on the right side of history and is changing an entire industry. If I didn't believe that (and didn't believe that Covad will be VERY major player in a huge market) I wouldn't work here.
Everyone is missing the point. You cannot get a good web experience without three things... a real browser that works, a way of entering data/manipulating the browser screen, and a screen big enough to display everything. You are still describing a solution that solves only 1/3rd of the problem... most of us here would settle for 2/3rds. ;)
... Linux or Win98? If it is a real PC, I'd suspect both.
I still believe the solution that will triumph in the end is likely to be a fully-functional, very small computer that runs a real browser and a real OS. It should be able to connect to the internet either over mobile phones or by using wireless. Once such a device comes out, expect the palms to either "bulk up" or become a niche market of diehard fans.
As for the dream machine, the question in my mind is "which OS?"
"I'm hijacking this thread... take me to Cuba!" On a serious note... I work for perhaps the most influential DSL provider in the world, and here is what I want to tell you. Nobody is paying any attention to Linux. Sure, some of us use it, but for sheer market reasons, we are coming out with lower-cost devices primarily for the PC marketplace. These devices are, in many cases, already dependent upon PPPoE software. And do you think we're taking the time to test/qualify/distribute the software for Linux? Not likely... Still, even the biggest DSL providers only have about 100,000 customers, so if there was a really strong desire from Linux users to get organized and get their DSL, then who would possibly want to refuse that many customers? Linux users can change things, but you will all have to get better organized. Here's how... Take a known quantity with lots of readers in the Linux world, such as Andover/Slashdot, and use them to start providing DSL services. Essentially, you'd make them an ISP in the same sense that bowie.net is an ISP... all the service and installation is outsourced. Once you have that, it would be a lot easier to have a company approach a major DSL player and say "We have 30,000 users who wants DSL... who wants to play with us?" I can't do it for you, but best of luck out there...!
Almost all of the comments I have seen completely miss the reason why Microsoft is doing this deal...
It's the connectivity, stupid! Microsoft has invested millions already into companies that provide cable modems... they have also invested heavily in DSL companies such as Northpoint, who signed a deal with Tandy/Radio Shack to market their wares in Radio Shack.. what that means is that Microsoft's fledgling DSL service can work with Northpoint's national DSL service in offering high-speed connectivity across the nation, and of course the default ISP for these "great deals" will be MSN. Radio Shack will have their own install trucks and personnel to bring DSL to the masses, probably using the newest, most consumer-friendly type of DSL which allows respectable bandwidth and telephone calls over the same line. In other words, Microsoft wants to dominate your desktop, your web browser, your gate way to the net, and even make a profit off of getting you connected.
Contrary to what some people think, DSL is a good thing, and getting a lot better real soon. Sure there is the possibility of fast access on cable modems, assuming that all your neighbors don't want on the 'net too... but do you really want to share your bandwidth (and your "secure" network) with Billy down the street? Already, there is information showing that DSL is faster than cable modems during evening hours. Why? Because little Billy is watching that streaming porn again...
Personally, I hope a lot of you are right and that this flops, but I suspect that many drones will jump on the bandwagon once the price range hits about $40 a month... Hey! They can offer three months of free service with every upgrade to Windows 2000! Whee. The idea of using a good DSL modem to deliver MSN is kinda repulsive, no?!? It's like racing your new sports car with the great paint job over gravel roads. Pretty grating...