They're just re-running the story periodically until they reach their subscription threshhold.
Re:But his biography says his b-day is the 18th
on
RMS Turns 50
·
· Score: 1
Ah yes, you certainly could parse it that way.
Confusing prose, but I believe you are correct.
But his biography says his b-day is the 18th
on
RMS Turns 50
·
· Score: 4, Informative
"I was devastated by the fear, but I couldn't imagine what to do and didn't have the guts to go demonstrate," recalls Stallman, whose March 18th birthday earned him a dreaded low number in the draft lottery when the federal government finally eliminated college deferments in 1971."
Taken from the Free as in Freedom, which you can read here.
I remembered this because I thought I shared a birthday with RMS. Perhaps I was wrong after all.
Well, it seems that the peppercoin folks will be making their money by subtracting a percentage from the probability that a payment is made (i.e., if the site accepts 100 micropayments with a 50/50 chance of a $10 payment on each, they probably took in enough to payout 1% more than the payment total). There's no reason they can't share this margin with consumers by reducing the chances of a payout in return for sign-up bonuses, etc.
What this means is that a lot of people can get introductory deals where they don't get charged at all on their credit card until they've racked up say $5 in payments, and they get the first dollar's worth free, or however much they figure they can get away with.
Then they can turn to the businesses that accept peppercoins and differentiate between confirmed paid customers (who have dished out enough micropayments to have had their credit card successfully billed) and those who are still introductory, and give a better percentage rate on paid customers, encouraging repeat customers.
In other words, if a not-yet-billed customer dishes you a micropayment, you get a chance of a payout based on their likelihood of paying which is fairly low but definitely nonzero. If a confirmed customer comes you get a much better payout based on the likelihood that they will again pass their billing threshhold of say $10 or whatever amount makes it worthwhile to actually bill them.
Please note that I'm not saying this is how Peppercoin will do it, just that this is how they could solve the initial lump payment problem.
It's also worth noting that it still doesn't solve a different problem, and that is the hesitancy of people to give their credit card number out over the internet at all, particularly for services that have the potential to continue charging you for things (i.e., a peppercoin account is more abusable than a book purchase).
This sounds like it could work. In a way I would miss the free-beer web, but then this will draw a sharp division between the free web and the commerce web, and the free web may flourish again once the free professional competition decides to start charging.
Intriguing ideas. Well, there went my lunch break...
If (EverythingMS) == BAD then AdvocateCredibility == FALSE.
Be objective. Linux's merits will stand out. Just don't sound like a zealot.
Hm, Copernicus found himself in a similar dilemma. Only it wasn't zealotry he was charged with, it was heresy.
When your only choices are "downplay the truth" or "sound like a zealot", it's tough to manage. The truth does not always lie between the extremes of popular opinion. Only the middle lies there.
You cannot define offense by who is offended, because you can ALWAYS find someone who is offended by ANYTHING.
So? That doesn't mean they're not really offended. But let's face it, some offenses are worse than others. You want to make it sound like words are completely neutral, but they're not.
My goal is not to offend no one, but to minimize offense where possible.
The rational point of view is looking at the intent of what someone is saying.
But intent is not always conscious, and in fact not always relevant. People don't usually directly mean hurtful things by making gay jokes, but they create a hurtful atmosphere by perpetuating them. Just because you're not hurt by something doesn't mean others aren't. You are not a linguistic island.
Furthermore, announcing that something is the "rational point of view" kind of begs the question of whether what you're about to say is correct, doesn't it? Especially when precisely what we're discussing is differing points of view.
I'm particularly reminded of someone who was fired [adversity.net] for using the word "niggardly" in a staff meeting! A black person was offended, even though the word has absolutely nothing to do with the word "nigger"
This was a tough case. The words do sound an awful lot like each other, even though you correctly imply that their etymologies seem to differ. If I were an intelligent racist (how I wish that were a simple oxymoron), I would realize that I could say a lot of the things I mean without actually saying them.
It turns out, I wouldn't mind at all if the word niggardly were used less because, as your example demonstrates, it is more effective at creating confusion than at connoting that someone is cheap. It's an archaic word and is obviously ripe for misinterpretation.
Words don't exist in a vacuum. Every word communicated requires both a speaker and a listener, and they both have to do the job of interpreting those words. It is rude to ignore the likely interpretation of the listener when there is a less encumbered turn of phrase available.
However, why does everyone have to be sensitive to everything that might offend anyone?
Because (1) it's not nice to offend people and (2) it's important to understand that offense is in the eye of the offended, not the offender.
If you are not strange, you wouldn't like it if I walked up to your mother and called her a two-dollar whore. It's not censorship to suggest that this is a bad idea, it's common decency.
I imagine you're not part of a culture where flip references to your history can be offensive, but there are people who are and it's just common decency to not be a jerk to those people, especially when a similar phrase would do just fine (Path of pain, tutorial of terror, whatever:)
No one's going to ask you not to use C, there's a clear differentiation between the tool and the motivation of the user in your example. But it wouldn't be out of line to ask a software project to change it's name if it were genuinely offensive.
People who complain about political correctness, in my experience, complain because they say such awful things, for instance, they'll say "this may not be politically correct, but" then tell a mean-spirited N-word joke or the like.
There's the caricature version of political correctness (vertically challenged, etc.), and then there's common decency- too often people engaging in the latter are viciously attacked for engaging in the former.
So why don't we tax each dollar once when it enters the economy and be done with it? (Uh, that is a joke, in case it's not clear...)
You make it sound so bad. Taxes work 'recursively' because they are based on money either changing hands or accumulating over a fixed period, not merely existing. Taxes work that way because that's the way the economy works- money has value based on who's exchanging (or not exchanging!) it for what.
How could I forget this? You could mirror an entire computer science education - a whole year's worth of the ArsDigita University lectures. They are under a sharing-friendly license.
The details are here: http://aduni.org/donate/
If you were to offer to mirror all these files, I'm sure the folks who are currently maintaining them would be most grateful.
Except when the president is an idiot. Or an actor with alzheimers. Or some damned cowboy more interested in his ranch than his republic. Am I repeating myself? Sorry.
One need not choose between complaining and contributing.
Furthermore, small amounts of money can make a big difference. A lot of contributors of small amounts of money builds popular support for a cause. Giving $65 gets you a t-shirt, when you wear it other like-minded people are reminded of what's at stake and more likely to have a conversation, give money, etc- your $65 might inspire two other people who wouldn't have contributed to give.
Like all organizations, the EFF must decide what cases it can take based on priorities and resources. Small differences in resources might make the difference between the EFF taking or not taking your case when Hilary and Jack come knocking.
Think about it.
It's true that all three branches of the US government are for sale. Fortunately for us, decisions that are easier to defend on principle are more affordable than crooked profit-over-people decisions. But they are not free. If you have the time and expertise, volunteer. If not, donate some money and don't stop complaining.
Students who need to do a school project jump immediately to mind. Or professors looking for new programming assignments, instead of assigning Yet Another Space Invaders Clone.
The synergy here could be dramatic. Students learn by taking a stab at solving real user needs that might otherwise go unfulfilled.
Maybe, except that now all ineterested readers can get the book for free and the author goes hungry.
Kind of like when too many people on slashdot read my posts I go hungry?
It continues to amaze me that people want to rewrite the laws of supply and demand in order to save the careers of people with poor business plans. Why didn't anyone try to save the Pony Express or 80's Hair Bands this way?
If everyone is skipping the ads, free TV is going to go away.
Haha, yeah, then we'll all have to run a special wire to our houses and pay for the same content we get for free now. It'll never happen buddy.
But it would be nice- if we were already paying for it, we wouldn't have to sit through the commercials. And if we paid for it, we'd own it, right? right?
Slashdot Mirror
They're just re-running the story periodically until they reach their subscription threshhold.
Ah yes, you certainly could parse it that way.
Confusing prose, but I believe you are correct.
"I was devastated by the fear, but I couldn't imagine what to do and didn't have the guts to go demonstrate," recalls Stallman, whose March 18th birthday earned him a dreaded low number in the draft lottery when the federal government finally eliminated college deferments in 1971."
Taken from the Free as in Freedom, which you can read here.
I remembered this because I thought I shared a birthday with RMS. Perhaps I was wrong after all.
The way people seem to avoid it today, you'd think shame funded terrorism too.
But not oil companies, oh no.
Company dies, investors seek an exit... Next on slashdot: Pants put on, one leg at a time.
Erm, "Company placed in meat locker with 800lb. Gorilla mysteriously bludgeoned to death, news at 11"
erm,UNIX didn't die in the '80s.
Only 3% of consumers are buying less music because prices are too high?
The other 97% are buying no music because the prices are too high!
QED baby, Q E D.
By the way, it's copyright law (and to some extent trademark law) that keeps the Phantom Edit out of our hands.
George Lucas started the Star Wars thing, but he's fucked it all up and no longer deserves to steer his monopoly franchise.
Copyright law gives too much power to artists who have left their prime. Free derivative works for the people!
Well, it seems that the peppercoin folks will be making their money by subtracting a percentage from the probability that a payment is made (i.e., if the site accepts 100 micropayments with a 50/50 chance of a $10 payment on each, they probably took in enough to payout 1% more than the payment total). There's no reason they can't share this margin with consumers by reducing the chances of a payout in return for sign-up bonuses, etc.
What this means is that a lot of people can get introductory deals where they don't get charged at all on their credit card until they've racked up say $5 in payments, and they get the first dollar's worth free, or however much they figure they can get away with.
Then they can turn to the businesses that accept peppercoins and differentiate between confirmed paid customers (who have dished out enough micropayments to have had their credit card successfully billed) and those who are still introductory, and give a better percentage rate on paid customers, encouraging repeat customers.
In other words, if a not-yet-billed customer dishes you a micropayment, you get a chance of a payout based on their likelihood of paying which is fairly low but definitely nonzero. If a confirmed customer comes you get a much better payout based on the likelihood that they will again pass their billing threshhold of say $10 or whatever amount makes it worthwhile to actually bill them.
Please note that I'm not saying this is how Peppercoin will do it, just that this is how they could solve the initial lump payment problem.
It's also worth noting that it still doesn't solve a different problem, and that is the hesitancy of people to give their credit card number out over the internet at all, particularly for services that have the potential to continue charging you for things (i.e., a peppercoin account is more abusable than a book purchase).
This sounds like it could work. In a way I would miss the free-beer web, but then this will draw a sharp division between the free web and the commerce web, and the free web may flourish again once the free professional competition decides to start charging.
Intriguing ideas. Well, there went my lunch break...
Was it bigger than your head?
If (EverythingMS) == BAD then AdvocateCredibility == FALSE.
Be objective. Linux's merits will stand out. Just don't sound like a zealot.
Hm, Copernicus found himself in a similar dilemma. Only it wasn't zealotry he was charged with, it was heresy.
When your only choices are "downplay the truth" or "sound like a zealot", it's tough to manage. The truth does not always lie between the extremes of popular opinion. Only the middle lies there.
You cannot define offense by who is offended, because you can ALWAYS find someone who is offended by ANYTHING.
So? That doesn't mean they're not really offended. But let's face it, some offenses are worse than others. You want to make it sound like words are completely neutral, but they're not.
My goal is not to offend no one, but to minimize offense where possible.
The rational point of view is looking at the intent of what someone is saying.
But intent is not always conscious, and in fact not always relevant. People don't usually directly mean hurtful things by making gay jokes, but they create a hurtful atmosphere by perpetuating them. Just because you're not hurt by something doesn't mean others aren't. You are not a linguistic island.
Furthermore, announcing that something is the "rational point of view" kind of begs the question of whether what you're about to say is correct, doesn't it? Especially when precisely what we're discussing is differing points of view.
I'm particularly reminded of someone who was fired [adversity.net] for using the word "niggardly" in a staff meeting! A black person was offended, even though the word has absolutely nothing to do with the word "nigger"
This was a tough case. The words do sound an awful lot like each other, even though you correctly imply that their etymologies seem to differ. If I were an intelligent racist (how I wish that were a simple oxymoron), I would realize that I could say a lot of the things I mean without actually saying them.
It turns out, I wouldn't mind at all if the word niggardly were used less because, as your example demonstrates, it is more effective at creating confusion than at connoting that someone is cheap. It's an archaic word and is obviously ripe for misinterpretation.
Words don't exist in a vacuum. Every word communicated requires both a speaker and a listener, and they both have to do the job of interpreting those words. It is rude to ignore the likely interpretation of the listener when there is a less encumbered turn of phrase available.
However, why does everyone have to be sensitive to everything that might offend anyone?
:)
Because (1) it's not nice to offend people and (2) it's important to understand that offense is in the eye of the offended, not the offender.
If you are not strange, you wouldn't like it if I walked up to your mother and called her a two-dollar whore. It's not censorship to suggest that this is a bad idea, it's common decency.
I imagine you're not part of a culture where flip references to your history can be offensive, but there are people who are and it's just common decency to not be a jerk to those people, especially when a similar phrase would do just fine (Path of pain, tutorial of terror, whatever
No one's going to ask you not to use C, there's a clear differentiation between the tool and the motivation of the user in your example. But it wouldn't be out of line to ask a software project to change it's name if it were genuinely offensive.
People who complain about political correctness, in my experience, complain because they say such awful things, for instance, they'll say "this may not be politically correct, but" then tell a mean-spirited N-word joke or the like.
There's the caricature version of political correctness (vertically challenged, etc.), and then there's common decency- too often people engaging in the latter are viciously attacked for engaging in the former.
Don't forget "Capitalism doesn't suck, it's just all the corporations!"
So why don't we tax each dollar once when it enters the economy and be done with it? (Uh, that is a joke, in case it's not clear...)
You make it sound so bad. Taxes work 'recursively' because they are based on money either changing hands or accumulating over a fixed period, not merely existing. Taxes work that way because that's the way the economy works- money has value based on who's exchanging (or not exchanging!) it for what.
nice, but they can't go any bigger than 256x256
And I've been trying like mad to get them to change this. All I want is a single 1024x768 icon for Emacs on my desktop.
How could I forget this? You could mirror an entire computer science education - a whole year's worth of the ArsDigita University lectures. They are under a sharing-friendly license.
The details are here:
http://aduni.org/donate/
If you were to offer to mirror all these files, I'm sure the folks who are currently maintaining them would be most grateful.
Check out openmusicregistry.org.
You can find lots of free content from the links at the registry.
Except when the president is an idiot. Or an actor with alzheimers. Or some damned cowboy more interested in his ranch than his republic. Am I repeating myself? Sorry.
We can't have Diablo III running under Winex now, can we?
Buy 'em out, boys! (cue maniacal laughter)
Slashdot
News for Nerds. Stuff that's never gonna happen.
Your fundamental premise is flawed:
One need not choose between complaining and contributing.
Furthermore, small amounts of money can make a big difference. A lot of contributors of small amounts of money builds popular support for a cause. Giving $65 gets you a t-shirt, when you wear it other like-minded people are reminded of what's at stake and more likely to have a conversation, give money, etc- your $65 might inspire two other people who wouldn't have contributed to give.
Like all organizations, the EFF must decide what cases it can take based on priorities and resources. Small differences in resources might make the difference between the EFF taking or not taking your case when Hilary and Jack come knocking.
Think about it.
It's true that all three branches of the US government are for sale. Fortunately for us, decisions that are easier to defend on principle are more affordable than crooked profit-over-people decisions. But they are not free. If you have the time and expertise, volunteer. If not, donate some money and don't stop complaining.
Students who need to do a school project jump immediately to mind. Or professors looking for new programming assignments, instead of assigning Yet Another Space Invaders Clone.
The synergy here could be dramatic. Students learn by taking a stab at solving real user needs that might otherwise go unfulfilled.
Maybe, except that now all ineterested readers
can get the book for free and the author goes
hungry.
Kind of like when too many people on slashdot read my posts I go hungry?
It continues to amaze me that people want to rewrite the laws of supply and demand in order to save the careers of people with poor business plans. Why didn't anyone try to save the Pony Express or 80's Hair Bands this way?
If everyone is skipping the ads, free TV is going to go away.
Haha, yeah, then we'll all have to run a special wire to our houses and pay for the same content we get for free now. It'll never happen buddy.
But it would be nice- if we were already paying for it, we wouldn't have to sit through the commercials. And if we paid for it, we'd own it, right? right?