It's all about customer segregation. The normal folks who just want to stay up-to-date on the news won't pay for a subscription. Instead NYT relies on advertising with the added value of registration for better demographics.
People who want to look at older articles are more likely to be professionals. They are doing research of one kind or another. They journalists, historians, politicians, and pundits. These folks are more likely to pay and it would be stupid for NYT to leave that money on the table.
All of this talk about bandwidth costs and storage costs is really quite silly.
In grad school one of my physics professors wrote a paper on orienting onself in zero g with no net angular momentum. One student was just convinced it was impossible.
Soon thereafter we were visted by Story Musgrave (one of astronauts who fixed Hubble) and the professor told him of the paper. Story immediately sat down on a swivel chair and demonstrated the motion necessary to turn in zero g without grabbing on to anything.
It's interesting how a concept that caused some interesting debates among the students suddenly became obvious when it was directly demonstrated.
Pheh..
Crosby is just bitter and out of touch. If he could make Brittany Spears money, he would be in pair of hip-hugging jeans in a heartbeat. (Now there's a mental image.)
It reminds me of a Jerry Garcia interview where he was asked about why he didn't sell out. He said something like "because we didn't know what they were buying!"
Now it's true that there are a lot of divas and crooners that are marketing creations and don't contribute much musically. Who cares? Let the teenagers have thier sex idols, and let the record companies make some money off of them. There is still a lot of great music coming out. The last grammys with 'White Stripes', 'Black Eyed Peas', and 'Outkast' are sufficient counter examples.
It's also true that FM radio is becoming a wasteland. Again, who cares? With sattelite radio, digital jukeboxes, and streaming services what difference does it make if one medium is less than stellar?
It's also not true that this is a new phenomenon. Anyone ever hear of the Monkeys?
Having been a physics TA at a large university when I was a grad student, I have graded hundreds and hundreds of astronomy essays and physics tests. It doesn't take long even to recognize the major points and typical pitfalls and develop a very mechanized grading algorithm, even for an essay question.
English essays at the undergrad level probably aren't much different. I would rather avoid having the grading process entirely dependant on AI, but I can see this as a valuable tool for a human grader. It would increase fairness and uniformity and allow the human grader to focus on things the computer can't understand.
Slashdot Mirror
It's all about customer segregation. The normal folks who just want to stay up-to-date on the news won't pay for a subscription. Instead NYT relies on advertising with the added value of registration for better demographics. People who want to look at older articles are more likely to be professionals. They are doing research of one kind or another. They journalists, historians, politicians, and pundits. These folks are more likely to pay and it would be stupid for NYT to leave that money on the table. All of this talk about bandwidth costs and storage costs is really quite silly.
In grad school one of my physics professors wrote a paper on orienting onself in zero g with no net angular momentum. One student was just convinced it was impossible. Soon thereafter we were visted by Story Musgrave (one of astronauts who fixed Hubble) and the professor told him of the paper. Story immediately sat down on a swivel chair and demonstrated the motion necessary to turn in zero g without grabbing on to anything. It's interesting how a concept that caused some interesting debates among the students suddenly became obvious when it was directly demonstrated.
Pheh.. Crosby is just bitter and out of touch. If he could make Brittany Spears money, he would be in pair of hip-hugging jeans in a heartbeat. (Now there's a mental image.) It reminds me of a Jerry Garcia interview where he was asked about why he didn't sell out. He said something like "because we didn't know what they were buying!" Now it's true that there are a lot of divas and crooners that are marketing creations and don't contribute much musically. Who cares? Let the teenagers have thier sex idols, and let the record companies make some money off of them. There is still a lot of great music coming out. The last grammys with 'White Stripes', 'Black Eyed Peas', and 'Outkast' are sufficient counter examples. It's also true that FM radio is becoming a wasteland. Again, who cares? With sattelite radio, digital jukeboxes, and streaming services what difference does it make if one medium is less than stellar? It's also not true that this is a new phenomenon. Anyone ever hear of the Monkeys?
Having been a physics TA at a large university when I was a grad student, I have graded hundreds and hundreds of astronomy essays and physics tests. It doesn't take long even to recognize the major points and typical pitfalls and develop a very mechanized grading algorithm, even for an essay question. English essays at the undergrad level probably aren't much different. I would rather avoid having the grading process entirely dependant on AI, but I can see this as a valuable tool for a human grader. It would increase fairness and uniformity and allow the human grader to focus on things the computer can't understand.