But I have subscribed on occasion. I don't believe any of the site you mention would need or be able to support a subscription as high as $10-20 per month though. That's certainly far more than they are getting per user currently from advertising.
Yet with less users and more costs (processing money is expensive), they would need to get more income from each of their users than they currently do.
A fear you suffer from the affliction of believing that your personal lack of creativity represents the best the rest of the world can do.
And yet you said:
It is difficult to imagine an funding model for the internet with worse social costs.
Which is what I was replying too, the model I described would have far worse social costs and is also the most likely result if advertising magically disappeared, that is realism and YOUR lack of imagination, not mine.
A fear you suffer from the affliction of believing that your personal lack of creativity represents the best the rest of the world can do.
You start off by assuming that any significant content will be permanently locked up behind a paywall. That's just false. It is thinking stuck in the economic model of scarcity. The web is neither rivalrous nor particularly excludable. In other words the marginal cost of each additional viewer approaches zero. Once your fixed costs are paid for, it isn't necessary to continue to charge money.
I'm afraid this is simply incorrect, connection to the internet requires bandwidth, which needs to be paid for, this is an ongoing cost. Even if you somehow removed the commercial connection system, ongoing maintenance and capacity upgrades would still be required. The scale of such maintenance is such that even in a volunteer organisation you would still require significant capital to maintain it.
You start off by assuming that any significant content will be permanently locked up behind a paywall.
With the notable exception of wikipedia, which still requires massive donation campaigns and has limited reliability in terms of information content due to its reliance on amateur users, this is not a suitable model for many purposes. Most significant websites on the internet have some form of advertising or paywall, this is due to their need to make money, in order to pay for the creation of content. This is because most people have to eat, pay rent, wear clothes and other living costs and thus they need to get paid.
Yes, there would be some hobyist who would continue supporting their websites at a loss, but they are few and far between. Such websites would also need to be small scale, as the current web design industry would not be sustainable if it is dependent on only those sites. A large amount of content would disappear or stop being maintained.
Taken to the extreme your concept would depend purely on everyone being as self less as Gandhi, something that sadly I do not believe is possible for the majority of humanity (myself included).
Consider the ransom model, similar to how kickstarter works, once enough money has been collected production begins and the end result is released to the public domain. It is entirely possible to build a healthy profit margin into such a model - the producers are unlikely to win the lottery but even something as small as a 25% guaranteed profit on a production funded with other people's money would make any investor swoon. And that's just one of thousands of potential business models that don't need advertising and don't build paywalls to keep the poor out.
This assumes static content and free ongoing maintenance on their servers and internet connections, the reality is that most content on the internet is dynamic. This could be a good method for writing books or publishing web comics, its not a good idea for much of what the internet is used for today (sites like slashdot, news sites and social networks).
PS - you also seem to be completely uneducated regarding the nature of the current internet surveillance state. Tracking purchases is only a tiny piece of the puzzle. There are literally hundreds of companies that exist only to build profiles of people as they go from one web page to another in order to better target advertisements. That massive infrastr
And far less people to use it... consider how many people don't have access to a money transfer system such as Paypal, or Visa. (minors, low income people, residents of third world countries, countries under political sanctions, the list goes on)
A subscription based system (the only realistic alternative for the majority of internet functionality) would have far greater social costs: it would increase the divide between rich and poor, deny third world countries access to the "liberating effect" of the internet that is so popular here on/. And it would fail to remove the so called "surveillance state" as you would still have to pay for the websites you are using somehow, most likely through one of three large companies: Paypal, Visa and Mastercard. (And bitcoin is very easy to track if you are using the same computer for everything, without using something like TOR)
Online news sites such as the SMH (ones that don't have paywalls)
Free online games
Social Networks such as Facebook
Are you seriously saying that the internet would be a better place without those sites? Can you afford to pay a $10 to $20 monthly subscription to all of them?
I know that I wouldn't be able to afford a subscription to all of them and I suspect the majority of users responses would be the same.
Hear, hear! Advertising is necessary for most of the free services people use on the internet and the majority of/. users tend to ignore that. Yes, I know they sell your information - they are still providing a service. (/. itself is a good example of this, I personally leave the adds on even though I have the option to turn them off, because they really don't bother me.)
MS Office is also far more stable, which along with the ribbon (now that it has been forced as a standard for so long) stop people from migrating to LibreOffice. (From someone who has spent significant time using both)
If I hadn't just commented elsewhere I would have modden you up This is absolutly correct, I have yet to see any web editing software even approach the features of LibreOffice, never mind MS Office.
Many, many, many people have computers at work only for use with internal webapps and document editing (which can be done through webapps). Why wouldn't the Pixel work for them?
The document editing is the problem, with the exception of Libreoffice (which is ok unless you are a heavy power user or require stability when editing docx) I have not seen any "office alternative" that is anywhere near as powerfull as MS Office. (Document Styles, Templates, forms, Spreadsheet interface, modern looking slideshows, Good spell check, autosave, formating options, image embending quality). Anyone who needs to regularly, produce large documents for consumption my a mid size audience needs some, if not all of these features and they are just not available in the alternatives.
Really, personally I have found a lot of brilliant independent books on Amazon. You just have to read the reviews first to check that it is actually readable.
Or Australia, where they are already doing the same thing. (Although if the elections go the way they look like they are going to go, I expect that few will actually recive it)
Yep, one of the few reasons that I'll be voting for the government over the coalition in September (second last and last on the ballot). Although I doubt they'll win, hopefully the pirate party will get its act together before than or Tony Abbot loses the Liberal leadership (unlikley).
And you never need to transfer files or other data between these computers? You're cable modem should not limit that. This is more use for corporate networks and large events, though.
I'm interested to know how he managed to survive two epileptic fits whilst he car was going at those speeds, if he can do that he is probably fine to drive normally.
Um, must cars won't lock the wheel if the ignition is off. (E.g. my 2011 mazda 2 doesn't) If you want a safe way to test this park your car on a hill and the remove the handbrake, in most cars you can still steer.
Surely turning off the engine would have stopped this? Does anyone know if there are other safety issues with that, personally I haven't tried turning off my engine whilst the car is moving at more then 5km/h
Slashdot Mirror
But I have subscribed on occasion. I don't believe any of the site you mention would need or be able to support a subscription as high as $10-20 per month though. That's certainly far more than they are getting per user currently from advertising.
Yet with less users and more costs (processing money is expensive), they would need to get more income from each of their users than they currently do.
A fear you suffer from the affliction of believing that your personal lack of creativity represents the best the rest of the world can do.
And yet you said:
It is difficult to imagine an funding model for the internet with worse social costs.
Which is what I was replying too, the model I described would have far worse social costs and is also the most likely result if advertising magically disappeared, that is realism and YOUR lack of imagination, not mine.
A fear you suffer from the affliction of believing that your personal lack of creativity represents the best the rest of the world can do.
You start off by assuming that any significant content will be permanently locked up behind a paywall. That's just false. It is thinking stuck in the economic model of scarcity. The web is neither rivalrous nor particularly excludable. In other words the marginal cost of each additional viewer approaches zero. Once your fixed costs are paid for, it isn't necessary to continue to charge money.
I'm afraid this is simply incorrect, connection to the internet requires bandwidth, which needs to be paid for, this is an ongoing cost. Even if you somehow removed the commercial connection system, ongoing maintenance and capacity upgrades would still be required. The scale of such maintenance is such that even in a volunteer organisation you would still require significant capital to maintain it.
You start off by assuming that any significant content will be permanently locked up behind a paywall.
With the notable exception of wikipedia, which still requires massive donation campaigns and has limited reliability in terms of information content due to its reliance on amateur users, this is not a suitable model for many purposes. Most significant websites on the internet have some form of advertising or paywall, this is due to their need to make money, in order to pay for the creation of content. This is because most people have to eat, pay rent, wear clothes and other living costs and thus they need to get paid.
Yes, there would be some hobyist who would continue supporting their websites at a loss, but they are few and far between. Such websites would also need to be small scale, as the current web design industry would not be sustainable if it is dependent on only those sites. A large amount of content would disappear or stop being maintained.
Taken to the extreme your concept would depend purely on everyone being as self less as Gandhi, something that sadly I do not believe is possible for the majority of humanity (myself included).
Consider the ransom model, similar to how kickstarter works, once enough money has been collected production begins and the end result is released to the public domain. It is entirely possible to build a healthy profit margin into such a model - the producers are unlikely to win the lottery but even something as small as a 25% guaranteed profit on a production funded with other people's money would make any investor swoon. And that's just one of thousands of potential business models that don't need advertising and don't build paywalls to keep the poor out.
This assumes static content and free ongoing maintenance on their servers and internet connections, the reality is that most content on the internet is dynamic. This could be a good method for writing books or publishing web comics, its not a good idea for much of what the internet is used for today (sites like slashdot, news sites and social networks).
PS - you also seem to be completely uneducated regarding the nature of the current internet surveillance state. Tracking purchases is only a tiny piece of the puzzle. There are literally hundreds of companies that exist only to build profiles of people as they go from one web page to another in order to better target advertisements. That massive infrastr
So /. is crap? Why are you posting then?
And far less people to use it... consider how many people don't have access to a money transfer system such as Paypal, or Visa. (minors, low income people, residents of third world countries, countries under political sanctions, the list goes on)
A subscription based system (the only realistic alternative for the majority of internet functionality) would have far greater social costs: it would increase the divide between rich and poor, deny third world countries access to the "liberating effect" of the internet that is so popular here on /. And it would fail to remove the so called "surveillance state" as you would still have to pay for the websites you are using somehow, most likely through one of three large companies: Paypal, Visa and Mastercard. (And bitcoin is very easy to track if you are using the same computer for everything, without using something like TOR)
Are you seriously saying that the internet would be a better place without those sites? Can you afford to pay a $10 to $20 monthly subscription to all of them?
I know that I wouldn't be able to afford a subscription to all of them and I suspect the majority of users responses would be the same.
Hear, hear! Advertising is necessary for most of the free services people use on the internet and the majority of /. users tend to ignore that. /. itself is a good example of this, I personally leave the adds on even though I have the option to turn them off, because they really don't bother me.)
Yes, I know they sell your information - they are still providing a service. (
MS Office is also far more stable, which along with the ribbon (now that it has been forced as a standard for so long) stop people from migrating to LibreOffice. (From someone who has spent significant time using both)
If I hadn't just commented elsewhere I would have modden you up
This is absolutly correct, I have yet to see any web editing software even approach the features of LibreOffice, never mind MS Office.
Many, many, many people have computers at work only for use with internal webapps and document editing (which can be done through webapps). Why wouldn't the Pixel work for them?
The document editing is the problem, with the exception of Libreoffice (which is ok unless you are a heavy power user or require stability when editing docx) I have not seen any "office alternative" that is anywhere near as powerfull as MS Office. (Document Styles, Templates, forms, Spreadsheet interface, modern looking slideshows, Good spell check, autosave, formating options, image embending quality).
Anyone who needs to regularly, produce large documents for consumption my a mid size audience needs some, if not all of these features and they are just not available in the alternatives.
Because often people don't want the same 7 results for the same set of keywords.
Really, personally I have found a lot of brilliant independent books on Amazon. You just have to read the reviews first to check that it is actually readable.
[citation needed]
Or Australia, where they are already doing the same thing. (Although if the elections go the way they look like they are going to go, I expect that few will actually recive it)
And look at how that worked in the US... do you think the same should apply to roads as well, they are becoming almost as important for the ecconomy.
Yep, one of the few reasons that I'll be voting for the government over the coalition in September (second last and last on the ballot). Although I doubt they'll win, hopefully the pirate party will get its act together before than or Tony Abbot loses the Liberal leadership (unlikley).
It does say they are offering it as an option, not requiring their employes to take it.
And you never need to transfer files or other data between these computers? You're cable modem should not limit that. This is more use for corporate networks and large events, though.
Or they could just change the passwords on accounts they phish and require users to wait a day or so to reset their password.
Out of interest have you tried implementing something like SPF to stop spoofing of your own domain, a lot of spam filters pick it up now.
Wow, they don't even bother to make the password field not clear text. You'd think some users would pick up on that?
No, but there would have been a border checkpoint with a barrier on it.
I'm interested to know how he managed to survive two epileptic fits whilst he car was going at those speeds, if he can do that he is probably fine to drive normally.
Um, must cars won't lock the wheel if the ignition is off. (E.g. my 2011 mazda 2 doesn't) If you want a safe way to test this park your car on a hill and the remove the handbrake, in most cars you can still steer.
Surely turning off the engine would have stopped this? Does anyone know if there are other safety issues with that, personally I haven't tried turning off my engine whilst the car is moving at more then 5km/h