No, get it straight. Xerox invented self-respect, but did nothing with it. You were the first to rip it off, but were then imitated and surpassed by Microsoft because you didn't license your self-respect to anyone else!
Well, I thumbed through Moore's book at the store recently, and it sure seemed like crap to me. I suppose the fans did the right thing to push Harper to publish said crap, but I am no more likely to buy it now than I would have been had 9/11 not happened. Moore is still a shrill, annoying wannabe who thinks he's about 10x more important than he really is.
My ISP (Verio, it turns out) lets me send email via my own domain, from any IP address. I just need to get email first, so the server knows I'm a legitimate user. This rule makes sense for spam prevention - and it also means that I don't need to change smtp settings when switching from DSL to dial-up to private network behind a firewall. If your ISP doesn't do this, it should.
A quick review of the rate card suggests that they will make more money from BFAs than from subscriptions, but that they want to give users a chance not to see those BFAs - hence subscriptions. Don't wanna pay? BFAs are higher margin, so slashdot makes money (if a BFA is available). Makes sense to me.
just give ACs a -6 bonus in your profile, they'll always end up at -1. (if you haven't checked this out, it's pretty neat: you can give bonuses between -6 and +6 to Friend/Foe/Fan/Freak as well as all comment ratings. it's in the "comments" section of your preferences.)
Forgive the cross-posting, but I made the following comment in reply to FortKnox's journal:
Slashdot is NOT adding popups. They are just adding normal ads like the skyscraper and the big square display ad . Normal ads you see everywhere else, and that already run on Newsforge and other OSDN sites.
These ads run from $90 per thousand (megabanner , one month) and $24 per thousand (below the fold , 1 year). Of course these are list prices, minus potentially deep discounts.
But what of subscriptions?
The slashdot subscription service can be viewed another way: you're buying ad banners for $5 per thousand! (Actually, it's more like $5 per 2000 or 3000, since most pages have several ads.) You're just buying blank space, or absence of ad banners, not actual banners.
Now this is a deep discount by any measure. Is it above the marginal cost of serving the pages? Yes. But is it also lower margin than serving ads? ABSOLUTELY. So the economics are interesting: now, in a period of crappy ad sales, $5 per thousand is a hell of a lot better than $0 (which they get for the Sourceforge ads); but if ad sales pick up, the opportunity cost of giving members such a cheap way to avoid ads could be substantial.
So I actually think slashdot is doing us a favor by setting up the subscription system. And if they tell us fuck you in the process, who cares? It's still a better deal than the alternative.
----
Followup comment: Look at the economics! Slashdot's subscription system may not be the best user interface (I certainly think all you can eat is better, even if it's not the best financial deal for the buyer, because you can set it and forget it) but it is the fairest I have ever seen. Don't like an ad? Pay not to see it, at a discounted price. I don't see how much fairer it could be.
And it's a smart move for the Slashboys because they need the revenue from bigger ads, and if even a few subscribe, it's another revenue stream, which is better than X10 and Casino-On-Net.
Of course people can run junkbuster. And people can take slashdot.rdf's and make alternate sites. Let 'em! They cut down on bandwidth utilization anyway.
The point of this is to allow big ads on the front page, like skyscrapers and square displays. That's what ad buyers want (newspapers and magazines have had display ads of even larger proportions for over a century). And remember what CT said: 82% of readers don't comment - many don't even click through to the stories! So front page ads reach these users.
Without subscriptions, the hue and cry would have been even louder. So by doing it this way, they gave people an alternative; sent pageviews through the roof on a HOF story; and will get some revenue out of it. Makes sense to me.
----
Following up based on this discussion: I do think all-you-can-eat would be better, and I suspect that/. would make more money from me (a heavy user with over 1600 posts, not including the occasional fuck-you posted as AC) from all-you-can-eat than from per-pageview. But if they decide it's not worth it to go that route, I'm okay with it too.
The big problem now is that the ads look weird because the layout hasn't been fixed yet to accommodate them. This too shall pass. Frankly I rather like the ads (notably the IBM ones) - bring 'em on! (I will subscribe however, when I get around to it.)
Exactly. I am just so appalled by this excuse - trying to get the sympathy of mothers who cry a bit after their kids are born for her act of mass murder.
Okay, I just don't get it. I'm a pretty hardcore slashdot user (>1600 posts) and I think it's pretty damn good, even though the whole Post of Doom thing pissed me off. I have karma 50 and a bunch of fans. So I am a contributor by your measure.
But I COST SLASHDOT MONEY. Possibly quite a bit. All those posts, pageviews, flames, trolls, song parodies, karma whores, and failed submissions take up bandwidth. Sure, I click on the ThinkGeek links and have bought a t-shirt or two - so I have sent them some bucks. But I am quite sure that, dollar wise, I'm a net negative.
By your analysis, should I subscribe? Slashdot *depends* on me, and 100000s of people like me, by your definition. Yet I cost them money. What to do?
My decision: I'm going to fork over some cash. The slashdot experience is worth it for me. Maybe I'll be paying to get pissed off - but sometimes that's worth it too. To me, it's participation, and sometimes that costs money, and that's okay!
(My troll accounts will see the ads. No need to burn cash on those.)
Once you know the credit card number I suspect it's not very anonymous. If I wanted to post something very sensitive I would log out, dial up or use a proxy, and then post as AC - and this scheme would prevent that. BAD IDEA. If you don't like ACs you can always give them a -1 bonus...
It's a pain in the ass to think about pay-per-view. I would rather overpay ("myself get cheated") via flat rate so I don't have to think about it - that's worth money to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Wasn't that the ad line for Windows 3.11 for Workgroups?
Why is this a privacy issue?! Oh, it's not. Someone just forgot to read the article, and just assigned a topic based on the title.
Yes, Windows constantly crashes. At least in my experience. So does Mac. YMMV.
I'm just asking.
No, get it straight. Xerox invented self-respect, but did nothing with it. You were the first to rip it off, but were then imitated and surpassed by Microsoft because you didn't license your self-respect to anyone else!
Well, I thumbed through Moore's book at the store recently, and it sure seemed like crap to me. I suppose the fans did the right thing to push Harper to publish said crap, but I am no more likely to buy it now than I would have been had 9/11 not happened. Moore is still a shrill, annoying wannabe who thinks he's about 10x more important than he really is.
I got my bombast right here.
You have to go to Region 2 for the second third, and Region 4 for the third.
And this is different from the norm how?
How often do you go to the movies?
Just sayin'.
You're screwed.
My ISP (Verio, it turns out) lets me send email via my own domain, from any IP address. I just need to get email first, so the server knows I'm a legitimate user. This rule makes sense for spam prevention - and it also means that I don't need to change smtp settings when switching from DSL to dial-up to private network behind a firewall. If your ISP doesn't do this, it should.
A quick review of the rate card suggests that they will make more money from BFAs than from subscriptions, but that they want to give users a chance not to see those BFAs - hence subscriptions. Don't wanna pay? BFAs are higher margin, so slashdot makes money (if a BFA is available). Makes sense to me.
just give ACs a -6 bonus in your profile, they'll always end up at -1. (if you haven't checked this out, it's pretty neat: you can give bonuses between -6 and +6 to Friend/Foe/Fan/Freak as well as all comment ratings. it's in the "comments" section of your preferences.)
Link to a Speedpass only credit card, and then chargeback any fraud.
slashdot's future. For all practical purposes, slashdot is already dead.
Slashdot is NOT adding popups. They are just adding normal ads like the skyscraper and the big square display ad . Normal ads you see everywhere else, and that already run on Newsforge and other OSDN sites.
These ads run from $90 per thousand (megabanner , one month) and $24 per thousand (below the fold , 1 year). Of course these are list prices, minus potentially deep discounts.
But what of subscriptions?
The slashdot subscription service can be viewed another way: you're buying ad banners for $5 per thousand! (Actually, it's more like $5 per 2000 or 3000, since most pages have several ads.) You're just buying blank space, or absence of ad banners, not actual banners.
Now this is a deep discount by any measure. Is it above the marginal cost of serving the pages? Yes. But is it also lower margin than serving ads? ABSOLUTELY. So the economics are interesting: now, in a period of crappy ad sales, $5 per thousand is a hell of a lot better than $0 (which they get for the Sourceforge ads); but if ad sales pick up, the opportunity cost of giving members such a cheap way to avoid ads could be substantial.
So I actually think slashdot is doing us a favor by setting up the subscription system. And if they tell us fuck you in the process, who cares? It's still a better deal than the alternative.
----
Followup comment: Look at the economics! Slashdot's subscription system may not be the best user interface (I certainly think all you can eat is better, even if it's not the best financial deal for the buyer, because you can set it and forget it) but it is the fairest I have ever seen. Don't like an ad? Pay not to see it, at a discounted price. I don't see how much fairer it could be.
And it's a smart move for the Slashboys because they need the revenue from bigger ads, and if even a few subscribe, it's another revenue stream, which is better than X10 and Casino-On-Net.
Of course people can run junkbuster. And people can take slashdot .rdf's and make alternate sites. Let 'em! They cut down on bandwidth utilization anyway.
The point of this is to allow big ads on the front page, like skyscrapers and square displays. That's what ad buyers want (newspapers and magazines have had display ads of even larger proportions for over a century). And remember what CT said: 82% of readers don't comment - many don't even click through to the stories! So front page ads reach these users.
Without subscriptions, the hue and cry would have been even louder. So by doing it this way, they gave people an alternative; sent pageviews through the roof on a HOF story; and will get some revenue out of it. Makes sense to me.
----
Following up based on this discussion: I do think all-you-can-eat would be better, and I suspect that /. would make more money from me (a heavy user with over 1600 posts, not including the occasional fuck-you posted as AC) from all-you-can-eat than from per-pageview. But if they decide it's not worth it to go that route, I'm okay with it too.
The big problem now is that the ads look weird because the layout hasn't been fixed yet to accommodate them. This too shall pass. Frankly I rather like the ads (notably the IBM ones) - bring 'em on! (I will subscribe however, when I get around to it.)
Anyway it wouldn't be /. without the fp'ers and crapflooders, so I would see their suppression as a reduction in value...
Now that's a modern corporation!
Exactly. I am just so appalled by this excuse - trying to get the sympathy of mothers who cry a bit after their kids are born for her act of mass murder.
Don't mod me funny, it's really sad.
But I COST SLASHDOT MONEY. Possibly quite a bit. All those posts, pageviews, flames, trolls, song parodies, karma whores, and failed submissions take up bandwidth. Sure, I click on the ThinkGeek links and have bought a t-shirt or two - so I have sent them some bucks. But I am quite sure that, dollar wise, I'm a net negative.
By your analysis, should I subscribe? Slashdot *depends* on me, and 100000s of people like me, by your definition. Yet I cost them money. What to do?
My decision: I'm going to fork over some cash. The slashdot experience is worth it for me. Maybe I'll be paying to get pissed off - but sometimes that's worth it too. To me, it's participation, and sometimes that costs money, and that's okay!
(My troll accounts will see the ads. No need to burn cash on those.)
Am I off base?
Once you know the credit card number I suspect it's not very anonymous. If I wanted to post something very sensitive I would log out, dial up or use a proxy, and then post as AC - and this scheme would prevent that. BAD IDEA. If you don't like ACs you can always give them a -1 bonus...
It's a pain in the ass to think about pay-per-view. I would rather overpay ("myself get cheated") via flat rate so I don't have to think about it - that's worth money to me.
what's his IP?