To maximize benefit for the advertisers, this is what I would suggest.
1) Ask users to supply basic demographic information, like age, sex, and general job description. Users could lie, of course, but, it would help establish an overall profile.
2) Require that users log in to view the site (like the NY times site does). This would chop bandwidth by a fair margin, get rid of annoying Anonymous comments, and allow better statistics to be gathered so that advertisers know who their target market is.
3) Precede the current front page (which is the list of articles) with a big ad page which must be clicked through before the list of articles is reached.
4) Reward good content providers (posters and submitters) somehow. They are your "authors" after all. Enter them into drawings for swag, or give them ad-free page views, or something.
In the end, its all about survival. Slashdot must change or die. There is no use whining about why it can't stay the same. If it is to survive, it must be beholden to its advertisers by providing them a good platform to sell their products.
I managed to get my Physics PhD using almost entirely free tools.
The thesis was written in LaTeX, using emacs, and made printer friendly with dvips.
The data plots were done in gnuplot.
The simulations were written in c with gcc or Fortran with g77. For the matrix analysis algorithms I used LAPACK. For minimization routines I used some of the Numerical Recipes routines, which aren't free software exactly, but Numerical Recipes is an easy book to buy used off Amazon.
I know that all of this stuff is really old-skool, but, it all works fine.
Back in the old days, UUCP was a common way for computers that were only occassionally connected to do file transfer, mail transfer and the like. It worked pretty well.
I predict that in the near future, all but three Linux distribution companies will be out of business, and they will rename their distros FreeLinux, OpenLinux, and NetLinux.
For Sun, it takes a while for products to move from press release to online store. The $1000 dollar Sun server mentioned in this slashdot article is only just for sale on their online store.
But, the SunBlade 100 is for sale on the online store now.
When working as a regular employee in a software firm in London, Dublin or Paris, expect a 30% cut in pay, compared to LA or San Francisco. Cost of living is on par with San Franciso or NYC, so money after expenses often much less than in the States.
But it is definitely worth it. Seeing the world is more important than cash.
Having said that, with a European passport, and as a independent contractor, there is the opportunity to make a lot of money if one is willing to follow jobs to less prestigious cities. Countries without tech workers will pay a lot to import them. (Belgium, for example.)
I agree that the big deregulation was a huge mistake, and Pete Wilson should be pelted with mashed potatoes, but, here are a couple of factoids to make us Southern Californians look better.
1. Los Angeles city generates most of its own power with its city-owned utilities, and as such, really isn't suffering in the current crisis.
2. There is no threat of blackouts in So Cal at the moment, even in those area not covered by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. We could send power up north to help keep San Fran alight, except that the just isn't enough wire capacity between North and South to transport it all.
3. A lot of the power generated in So Cal is from windmills, and many of the desert towns like Palm Springs are almost self sufficient through the wind farms.
Besides, those Northern Californians have always though they were so special, and didn't want to be associated with us Southlanders. Ha ha.
IBM has had a latex plugin for Netscape Navigator available for some time. You can check it out here . While I haven't used this commercial release, I did play with the alpha, which did fast and accurate rendering of equations.
The problem with latex on the web is that there already is a nice platform for those that wish to completely control page layout: Acrobat. And it has the advantage of playing nicely with mainstream word processors.
I know this is way off topic, but, the title to this story should really be "What if there were no copyright law?"
In English, you should use the subjunctive tense of the verb "be" when you make a statement that is contrary to fact.
See The American Heritage Book of English Usage for an explanation.
Slashdot Mirror
To maximize benefit for the advertisers, this is what I would suggest.
1) Ask users to supply basic demographic information, like age, sex, and general job description. Users could lie, of course, but, it would help establish an overall profile.
2) Require that users log in to view the site (like the NY times site does). This would chop bandwidth by a fair margin, get rid of annoying Anonymous comments, and allow better statistics to be gathered so that advertisers know who their target market is.
3) Precede the current front page (which is the list of articles) with a big ad page which must be clicked through before the list of articles is reached.
4) Reward good content providers (posters and submitters) somehow. They are your "authors" after all. Enter them into drawings for swag, or give them ad-free page views, or something.
In the end, its all about survival. Slashdot must change or die. There is no use whining about why it can't stay the same. If it is to survive, it must be beholden to its advertisers by providing them a good platform to sell their products.
I managed to get my Physics PhD using almost entirely free tools.
The thesis was written in LaTeX, using emacs, and made printer friendly with dvips.
The data plots were done in gnuplot.
The simulations were written in c with gcc or Fortran with g77. For the matrix analysis algorithms I used LAPACK. For minimization routines I used some of the Numerical Recipes routines, which aren't free software exactly, but Numerical Recipes is an easy book to buy used off Amazon.
I know that all of this stuff is really old-skool, but, it all works fine.
Maybe it'd suit your needs.
I predict that in the near future, all but three Linux distribution companies will be out of business, and they will rename their distros FreeLinux, OpenLinux, and NetLinux.
For Sun, it takes a while for products to move from press release to online store. The $1000 dollar Sun server mentioned in this slashdot article is only just for sale on their online store.
But, the SunBlade 100 is for sale on the online store now.
From my experience (your milage may vary),
When working as a regular employee in a software firm in London, Dublin or Paris, expect a 30% cut in pay, compared to LA or San Francisco. Cost of living is on par with San Franciso or NYC, so money after expenses often much less than in the States.
But it is definitely worth it. Seeing the world is more important than cash.
Having said that, with a European passport, and as a independent contractor, there is the opportunity to make a lot of money if one is willing to follow jobs to less prestigious cities. Countries without tech workers will pay a lot to import them. (Belgium, for example.)
I agree that the big deregulation was a huge mistake, and Pete Wilson should be pelted with mashed potatoes, but, here are a couple of factoids to make us Southern Californians look better. 1. Los Angeles city generates most of its own power with its city-owned utilities, and as such, really isn't suffering in the current crisis. 2. There is no threat of blackouts in So Cal at the moment, even in those area not covered by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. We could send power up north to help keep San Fran alight, except that the just isn't enough wire capacity between North and South to transport it all. 3. A lot of the power generated in So Cal is from windmills, and many of the desert towns like Palm Springs are almost self sufficient through the wind farms. Besides, those Northern Californians have always though they were so special, and didn't want to be associated with us Southlanders. Ha ha.
The problem with latex on the web is that there already is a nice platform for those that wish to completely control page layout: Acrobat. And it has the advantage of playing nicely with mainstream word processors.
I know this is way off topic, but, the title to this story should really be "What if there were no copyright law?" In English, you should use the subjunctive tense of the verb "be" when you make a statement that is contrary to fact. See The American Heritage Book of English Usage for an explanation.