It is widely accepted that people prefer not to be 'nickel and dimed.' Internet Service Providers charge flat fees, 99% of online subscription services are flat fee based, as are the majority of cable subscription services. Why? Because forcing people to monitor their consumption detracts from the overall user experience.
I remember going to Disneyland when you had to buy individual ride tickets instead of "all day passes"....It really made for a "nervous energy" that really took away from the experience... Having to chose either Space Mountain or The Materhorn (but not enough tickets for both). Even if you had ample tickets -- you were still subject to a "nervous tick" that made you think the the tickets were going to run out.
Well said. If someone says something I can relate to, and it gets posted on a blog that is only read by 6 people, and uses 100K of bandwith....That does not make the words mean less to me. Like I said in a post above -- we can use google to filter out the quality stories. (I do like slashdot for the comments on occasion...But in the long run the content is where it is at)
There will always be free sites as long as we have google and people with an opinion that can type it in and upload it to some $20 a month host. (unlike most sites -- I am confident that googles business plan will make enough cash to keep it free for the people.)
Oops that is Rackshack.net and not rackshack.com (I will forego my/. cool idea commision fee for that one.....Sorry taco.)
P.S.....I do have 50 karma to burn so mod away (I will empty out my kids penny jar if I have to buy them back.... But since I wont use paypal....I will have to put them in a box and UPS them to the front steps of VA.)
The cornerstone jewel from a company who had stock hover near 200 bills per share and you want me to fucking use PAYPAL to send you money. (I have never used a cuss word on/. before) Paypal is ok for Aunt Edna peddling tumbleweeds on Ebay --- But did not someone pony some cash away back in the glory days that can to fronted to sign up for a fucking merchant account? And bandwidth.....300 GB a month for 100 Bucks at Rackshack... A couple of these boxes should be able to sustain a semi busy geek board....And for a few single geeks making 100K a year spewing out c++ code for a fortune 500 company that would equate to beer money....
I do like/. and I will pay a fee (not through paypal though --- it does break my "any company who has the urge to ask me to pay to provide my mis-spelled bits of whino knowledge and opinion should at least have the balls to set up a merchant account....") Hell -- maybe enron and VA could get together and have a fucking garage sale or something.....
Let me start off by saying that most of my life I have been a music junkie. My dealer was the owner of a small record store in my hometown. I would walk into the store and he (knowing my musical tastes) would peddle me some free samplers from the record industry with a few sample songs from the album --- or sometimes a pre release FULL album thrown in for a bone. I would be ever so greatful that I was getting this "special" service. In retrospect he could set his clock by the fact that I would be marching in his store in a few days to purchase a full length album or two from the group of sample tapes he had given me before. I would leave the store with my new purchased albums and a new batch of sample tapes. Repeat and wash for 10 years and a tape collection over 500.
5 years later...The "big" record stores laugh at me when I ask for any samples. Radio does not play "my type of music"....I have know way of knowing what music to purchase....Let alone where to hear a sample before making the purchase....Needless to say, I go the next few years with only buying a handful of CD's (mostly from artists who had released music I liked "back in the day" or to replace my favorite crappy tapes with CD's.)
Fast forward to Napster....Much like the sample tapes I used to get when I was a kid...I can download a few obscure album songs from a band I read about and actually have a fair and partial decision making process....AND guess what -- I started to frequent the music stores like crazy, and started filling up my CD collection with FRESH music from new bands, and old bands I had somehow missed the first time around.
Post Napster: I have not been back to the record store because even if I had a gift certificate for a wheel barrow load of free CD's, I would not even know where to start....I tried gnutella for awhile, but it was not the same....Napster represented the WHOLE (by the numbers of people using it), everything else is just scattered pieces -- and if I was looking for top 40 or greatest hits records then maybe that would suffice -- but I am looking for obscure music from bands that may have never sold any more albums than I have fingers, never made the airwaves of radio, no MTV, yet still managed to get a record contract.
Bottom line: the industry has failed. And until I can walk into a record store that has all of the trappings of my former "dealer" OR can easily SNARF music samples from an endless pit of obscure recordings such as Napster -- then the recording industry will never see another red cent from me thank you.
That's what I have been saying for years. Most of the Window$ freaks that I talk to and try to say that Linux is a viable alternative not only because of open source vs. closed source, but because of price -- usually have not paid any more for their Windows software than I have my Linux software. (Back when I used Windows, I paid for everything -- and the cost just was way to much to keep up with $100 OS, $200 Office, $50-$250 for each piece of software and each "upgrade"...errr...bugfix....So that was an easy justification to take a few less features and save much money going with Linux.)
it's the sound of ten zillion intel owners saying: "who cares how cool and functional OS X is -- I can not run it on my PC." The viability of Linux in both the server room and the desktop is markatable because for the most part it is hardware agnostic.
Charging for value added version vs. basic, original free version = good.
Charging for free version = bait and swith type tactics (bad). ** Making your customers a casuality of your "success" and bad business model is not a cool way of doing business. (imagine if NBC or CBS came out and said that they were going to adopt an HBO type business model, and now you would have to pay $10.00 a month to see your evening news...that would be uncool -- vs. it's perfectlly ok for HBO to do it, because HBO has been a pay service from day 1 -- it was in their initial business plan.)
If thats what it takes to nab all those sickos that are rolling around in kiddie porn than that is a good thing...I think that if I were trying to run a successful ISP, I would try to identify those users who I could do without. I think in the future -- it will be easier for them to get rid of all those l33t hackers who have 9999 servers running and transfering full length movies 24/7 -- maybe then I good get some decent speed for my kernel downloads. (cable sucks when all of your neighbors decide to "get into this internet thing"... A coworker of mine just moved to a poor neighborhood and he has about 3 times the downstream as me....(His neighbors are more concerned about eating than P2P:)
Based on how much they want for the Handera models that are not color -- I cringe to think of how much a color one would cost (if it were available)...How long until people realize that CF has pretty much wrapped up the "standards WAR" for flash cards -- instead we still see even more and more alternatives....MMC, Smart Media, Sony Stick thingies.....Yet none of them can eclipse 128 Megs --- (CF has had 256 Meg+ for a long time now....)
Yea -- same thing happened to me...the disk fried put the firewall kept routing packets for 2 months -- granted I was running a remote syslog -- if the syslog was local, I am sure it would have halted at some point. The only way I found out about it was when I telneted in to vi a conf file and it would not save!
>> ). I just wonder how long the batteries last before they need recharging....
Well the company advertises a battery life of 3 hours. So my best bet would be anything over 2 1/2 hours would be an act of nature, a miracle for all to see....Hell, I have a guy here who swears that the same AA has been powering his wall clock for 30 20 Years:)
Anyway -- Even at 3 hours, thats a long way from being really usable.
Ah...But how do you define abuse? If I am listening to a 128K radio stream from shoutcast, while playing online checkers and downloading a few 30 meg service packs and such, sharing a few mp3's both directions on a napster type service (all on a fairly regular basis) -- am I an abuser -- or just a user taking advantage of the ability to do the types of things that can be done?
Ah...Mod this guy up -- When I signed up for broadband it was them telling me I could now stream video, multimedia, audio...etc...It was not them telling me that they would prefer I not use their service to it's capability. Bottom line -- the cable companies are saying "Come use our service it is MUCH better than dial up" and then on the other hand they are saying -- "we will be OK as long as our users patterns are the same they were when they were dialed up. As soon as they start taking advantage of the wider pipe then we are in trouble".
In other words they say if your browsing patterns are to open 3 web pages, download a 2 meg file, and Email and then turn off the computer -- it may take you 15 minutes....Now you can do it all in 3 minutes. What they didnt count on was you would still be sitting down and downloading files, streaming video, and playing online games for the next few hours.
Looks like VCD Cutter only works on Win32...I imagine there has to be a Linux way to do this. (I used to keep a partition with Win98 to do things like this -- but soon discovered that it would cost $25 to $100 bucks per piece of software to do anything....I used to do that kind of "Wild Spending" before I was married with children -- but nowadays my software purchases usually equate to a small "contribution" to Slackware or Debian.)
They usually do a followup of 24 on thursday or friday nights. (more than once I have missed a Tuesday showing -- only to catch up on Friday...errr...I guess I could use a Tivo.)
By the time you get done editing the commercials out of a 2 hour TV show -- you will finally feel like you are getting your money's worth out of that new Athlon:) In other words: It takes a steady hand and a little patience and alot of spare time to make these edits. (and then more time to Archive to CD) Some people may get off on this kind of stuff -- but after about 5 episodes of the Simpsons and another handful of Seinfield and Threes Company -- I was burned out -- and my fingers hurt...)
Re:VA Linux^H^H^H^H^HSoftware -- Oh so proud.
on
LWCE Reports Continue
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Just watched that. How ironic the ajoining "stock ticker" table cell to the left of the video reminded me of how proud good ole' Larry A. was to aquire the LNUX symbol and carry the Linux torch high (in what seems like just a few months ago.) The new video in the window in front of me (and just to the left of the LNUX symbol) was 6 minutes of good ole' Larry stressing (in not so many words) how they are "oh so past that yucky Linux thing" now. I don't know about you all, but that makes my stomache churn a bit. (Not quite in the "selling your own mother" category -- but not far off.)
Ya. Look at what IBM has done for the desktop products they have aquired in recent years...(let them die horrible deaths..) anyone remember the Lotus 123 spreadsheet, Amipro word processor, et all...If it wasnt for a steady stream of cash they would find someway to kill Notes also...Read the article in todays USATODAY...They are in the Linux thing for servers only...They will spend a gazillion dollars on getting 5000 VM's to run on a mainframe -- but I bet you wont see them spend a dime on anything for the desktop...
Why no represent? - Karma to burn
on
LWCE Reports Continue
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
How bad is VA and OSDN hurting to not represent at such a big event?? -- I guess 1 look at themes.org is a good example of how fast something can go downhill. (Saw the article on the Loki timeline -- will we see a VA/OSDN timeline?)
Slashdot Mirror
Yea -- How ironic: kinda like the Pita people all getting together for a steak dinner hu?
This comment on the parent thread says it all:
... Having to chose either Space Mountain or The Materhorn (but not enough tickets for both). Even if you had ample tickets -- you were still subject to a "nervous tick" that made you think the the tickets were going to run out.
It is widely accepted that people prefer not to be 'nickel and dimed.' Internet Service Providers charge flat fees, 99% of online subscription services are flat fee based, as are the majority of cable subscription services. Why? Because forcing people to monitor their consumption detracts from the overall user experience.
I remember going to Disneyland when you had to buy individual ride tickets instead of "all day passes"....It really made for a "nervous energy" that really took away from the experience
Do either of these have Linux clients? Have not followed the p2p communitty much since Napster. Do not have windows machine at home..
Well said. If someone says something I can relate to, and it gets posted on a blog that is only read by 6 people, and uses 100K of bandwith....That does not make the words mean less to me. Like I said in a post above -- we can use google to filter out the quality stories. (I do like slashdot for the comments on occasion...But in the long run the content is where it is at)
There will always be free sites as long as we have google and people with an opinion that can type it in and upload it to some $20 a month host. (unlike most sites -- I am confident that googles business plan will make enough cash to keep it free for the people.)
Oops that is Rackshack.net and not rackshack.com (I will forego my /. cool idea commision fee for that one.....Sorry taco.)
P.S.....I do have 50 karma to burn so mod away (I will empty out my kids penny jar if I have to buy them back.... But since I wont use paypal....I will have to put them in a box and UPS them to the front steps of VA.)
The cornerstone jewel from a company who had stock hover near 200 bills per share and you want me to fucking use PAYPAL to send you money. (I have never used a cuss word on /. before) Paypal is ok for Aunt Edna peddling tumbleweeds on Ebay --- But did not someone pony some cash away back in the glory days that can to fronted to sign up for a fucking merchant account? And bandwidth.....300 GB a month for 100 Bucks at Rackshack ... A couple of these boxes should be able to sustain a semi busy geek board....And for a few single geeks making 100K a year spewing out c++ code for a fortune 500 company that would equate to beer money....
/. and I will pay a fee (not through paypal though --- it does break my "any company who has the urge to ask me to pay to provide my mis-spelled bits of whino knowledge and opinion should at least have the balls to set up a merchant account....") Hell -- maybe enron and VA could get together and have a fucking garage sale or something.....
I do like
Let me start off by saying that most of my life I have been a music junkie. My dealer was the owner of a small record store in my hometown. I would walk into the store and he (knowing my musical tastes) would peddle me some free samplers from the record industry with a few sample songs from the album --- or sometimes a pre release FULL album thrown in for a bone. I would be ever so greatful that I was getting this "special" service. In retrospect he could set his clock by the fact that I would be marching in his store in a few days to purchase a full length album or two from the group of sample tapes he had given me before. I would leave the store with my new purchased albums and a new batch of sample tapes. Repeat and wash for 10 years and a tape collection over 500.
5 years later...The "big" record stores laugh at me when I ask for any samples. Radio does not play "my type of music"....I have know way of knowing what music to purchase....Let alone where to hear a sample before making the purchase....Needless to say, I go the next few years with only buying a handful of CD's (mostly from artists who had released music I liked "back in the day" or to replace my favorite crappy tapes with CD's.)
Fast forward to Napster....Much like the sample tapes I used to get when I was a kid...I can download a few obscure album songs from a band I read about and actually have a fair and partial decision making process....AND guess what -- I started to frequent the music stores like crazy, and started filling up my CD collection with FRESH music from new bands, and old bands I had somehow missed the first time around.
Post Napster: I have not been back to the record store because even if I had a gift certificate for a wheel barrow load of free CD's, I would not even know where to start....I tried gnutella for awhile, but it was not the same....Napster represented the WHOLE (by the numbers of people using it), everything else is just scattered pieces -- and if I was looking for top 40 or greatest hits records then maybe that would suffice -- but I am looking for obscure music from bands that may have never sold any more albums than I have fingers, never made the airwaves of radio, no MTV, yet still managed to get a record contract.
Bottom line: the industry has failed. And until I can walk into a record store that has all of the trappings of my former "dealer" OR can easily SNARF music samples from an endless pit of obscure recordings such as Napster -- then the recording industry will never see another red cent from me thank you.
That's what I have been saying for years. Most of the Window$ freaks that I talk to and try to say that Linux is a viable alternative not only because of open source vs. closed source, but because of price -- usually have not paid any more for their Windows software than I have my Linux software. (Back when I used Windows, I paid for everything -- and the cost just was way to much to keep up with $100 OS, $200 Office, $50-$250 for each piece of software and each "upgrade"...errr...bugfix....So that was an easy justification to take a few less features and save much money going with Linux.)
it's the sound of ten zillion intel owners saying: "who cares how cool and functional OS X is -- I can not run it on my PC." The viability of Linux in both the server room and the desktop is markatable because for the most part it is hardware agnostic.
Summed up with one thought:
Charging for value added version vs. basic, original free version = good.
Charging for free version = bait and swith type tactics (bad). ** Making your customers a casuality of your "success" and bad business model is not a cool way of doing business. (imagine if NBC or CBS came out and said that they were going to adopt an HBO type business model, and now you would have to pay $10.00 a month to see your evening news...that would be uncool -- vs. it's perfectlly ok for HBO to do it, because HBO has been a pay service from day 1 -- it was in their initial business plan.)
So how come he still has a computer?
he got to keep it as part of the divorce....(along with the shirt on his back!)
If thats what it takes to nab all those sickos that are rolling around in kiddie porn than that is a good thing...I think that if I were trying to run a successful ISP, I would try to identify those users who I could do without. I think in the future -- it will be easier for them to get rid of all those l33t hackers who have 9999 servers running and transfering full length movies 24/7 -- maybe then I good get some decent speed for my kernel downloads. (cable sucks when all of your neighbors decide to "get into this internet thing" ... A coworker of mine just moved to a poor neighborhood and he has about 3 times the downstream as me....(His neighbors are more concerned about eating than P2P :)
Based on how much they want for the Handera models that are not color -- I cringe to think of how much a color one would cost (if it were available)...How long until people realize that CF has pretty much wrapped up the "standards WAR" for flash cards -- instead we still see even more and more alternatives....MMC, Smart Media, Sony Stick thingies.....Yet none of them can eclipse 128 Megs --- (CF has had 256 Meg+ for a long time now....)
Yea -- same thing happened to me...the disk fried put the firewall kept routing packets for 2 months -- granted I was running a remote syslog -- if the syslog was local, I am sure it would have halted at some point. The only way I found out about it was when I telneted in to vi a conf file and it would not save!
>> ). I just wonder how long the batteries last before they need recharging....
:)
Well the company advertises a battery life of 3 hours. So my best bet would be anything over 2 1/2 hours would be an act of nature, a miracle for all to see....Hell, I have a guy here who swears that the same AA has been powering his wall clock for 30 20 Years
Anyway -- Even at 3 hours, thats a long way from being really usable.
> you have to charge more for the people that
> abuse the system.
Ah...But how do you define abuse? If I am listening to a 128K radio stream from shoutcast, while playing online checkers and downloading a few 30 meg service packs and such, sharing a few mp3's both directions on a napster type service (all on a fairly regular basis) -- am I an abuser -- or just a user taking advantage of the ability to do the types of things that can be done?
Ah...Mod this guy up -- When I signed up for broadband it was them telling me I could now stream video, multimedia, audio...etc...It was not them telling me that they would prefer I not use their service to it's capability. Bottom line -- the cable companies are saying "Come use our service it is MUCH better than dial up" and then on the other hand they are saying -- "we will be OK as long as our users patterns are the same they were when they were dialed up. As soon as they start taking advantage of the wider pipe then we are in trouble".
In other words they say if your browsing patterns are to open 3 web pages, download a 2 meg file, and Email and then turn off the computer -- it may take you 15 minutes....Now you can do it all in 3 minutes. What they didnt count on was you would still be sitting down and downloading files, streaming video, and playing online games for the next few hours.
Looks like VCD Cutter only works on Win32...I imagine there has to be a Linux way to do this. (I used to keep a partition with Win98 to do things like this -- but soon discovered that it would cost $25 to $100 bucks per piece of software to do anything....I used to do that kind of "Wild Spending" before I was married with children -- but nowadays my software purchases usually equate to a small "contribution" to Slackware or Debian.)
Is their a Linux version of this? If not -- does anyone know of a Linux product to do this? That would be neat.
They usually do a followup of 24 on thursday or friday nights. (more than once I have missed a Tuesday showing -- only to catch up on Friday...errr...I guess I could use a Tivo.)
By the time you get done editing the commercials out of a 2 hour TV show -- you will finally feel like you are getting your money's worth out of that new Athlon :) In other words: It takes a steady hand and a little patience and alot of spare time to make these edits. (and then more time to Archive to CD) Some people may get off on this kind of stuff -- but after about 5 episodes of the Simpsons and another handful of Seinfield and Threes Company -- I was burned out -- and my fingers hurt...)
Just watched that. How ironic the ajoining "stock ticker" table cell to the left of the video reminded me of how proud good ole' Larry A. was to aquire the LNUX symbol and carry the Linux torch high (in what seems like just a few months ago.) The new video in the window in front of me (and just to the left of the LNUX symbol) was 6 minutes of good ole' Larry stressing (in not so many words) how they are "oh so past that yucky Linux thing" now. I don't know about you all, but that makes my stomache churn a bit. (Not quite in the "selling your own mother" category -- but not far off.)
Ya. Look at what IBM has done for the desktop products they have aquired in recent years...(let them die horrible deaths..) anyone remember the Lotus 123 spreadsheet, Amipro word processor, et all...If it wasnt for a steady stream of cash they would find someway to kill Notes also...Read the article in todays USATODAY...They are in the Linux thing for servers only...They will spend a gazillion dollars on getting 5000 VM's to run on a mainframe -- but I bet you wont see them spend a dime on anything for the desktop...
How bad is VA and OSDN hurting to not represent at such a big event?? -- I guess 1 look at themes.org is a good example of how fast something can go downhill. (Saw the article on the Loki timeline -- will we see a VA/OSDN timeline?)