Reading all the comments so far, I get the impression that people are forgetting the likely target "merchant" audience for PepperCoin. The article is probably somewhat to blame for this, since it hints at online music downloads being the "killer app" for micropayment technology. 50 cents is a downright macropayment compared to what this system was designed for. I am thinking bigger, much bigger.
My guess is this system was likely not designed for use by run-of-the-mill merchants with transaction volume below the millions (and conceivably billions). Like many have pointed out, your typical store merchant would laugh at the prospect of roulette-based revenue.
This system was designed to solve the problem of handling billing and payment collection for A LOT of transactions per unit time. Think NASDAQ. Think VisaNet. Think McDonald's-years. Think pay per wireless packet, a concept routinely floated by Rivest's MIT colleagues including Dr. David Clark.
Coupled with a computationally efficient token verification scheme, I could see how this system could turn standard billing practice/procedures on its head, provided the big corporations have enough smart people in their stables to say, "Rivest is right." For instance, if my statistics memory serves, this system should effectively enable stepless billing (without increments or round-off issues) - in other words, finest-grain discrete-time pro-rating for services provided, tunable per application to some arbitrary epsilon.
I think music downloads are a red herring. It's entirely possible that PepperCoin will never see the light of day as a consumer payment service. But I'm very curious to see what the world's largest accounts receivable departments have to say about it.
Where in hell are you getting this? I didn't see it in the articles. Besides, you can get Memory Sticks up to 1GB right now. Did you misread something?
The biggest Memory Sticks available currently are 128MB.
256MB and 512MB memory sticks will be coming out this Spring but they will be bank-switched (i.e. a mechanical switch will let you choose which 128MB of RAM you want to use).
But don't forget that the anthrax spores that were being sent through the mail after 9/11 were traced to an Army lab in Maryland.
We're told we're trading liberty for security, but it's never quite clear how not being free will make us safe...
How do you really know those Anthrax spores came from an Army lab in Maryland? Why do you choose to believe that government-sponsored information but not other government-sponsored information? What criteria are you applying?
My point is, I think it's incredibly ironic that people are totally willing to believe and cite the government when it suits their argument and only double-take and question when their personal comfort space is intruded upon.
First, you neglect that how the product is made is an essential (yet invisible) quality of the product itself. If I pollute the environment or abuse the marketplace via monopoly rents then this "damage" to society may very well trump the "quality of the product". If I take advantage of children in slave labor to make shoes, then no matter how good the shoes are... the company that made them is "evil" without a doubt.
"Good and evil" are qualities that are completely orthogonal to business success.
Secondly, in our domain, the primary value of software is not intrinsic, instead it is proporational to the number of people who have adoped the software; the value of Microsoft Windows is much more proporational to the third-party applications that run on it rather than the code base itself, in a similar way the primary value of Microsoft Office is the number of business associates who also use the software, who can assist your usage of the software and who can read your files.
Yes, and let's not forget that initially there were ZERO people using Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office so there must be a missing factor that accounts for the rise of Microsoft penetration (product superiority perhaps)?
Reading this article and doing some google research into exactly who this David Stutz person is, I do not get the impression he was really an "influential figure" at Microsoft.
First off, Stutz by his own admission is trained as a musician. This "software architecture" thing appears to be more or less a lark.
His list of contributions (to MS and otherwise) in recent years appears to be:
"WebClasses" - a failed alternative to VB components for Microsoft Transaction Server
the "Shared Source CLI" - the underpinnings of Microsoft's vastly successful C# implementation
It seems Microsoft hired this guy to be their token, quirky open-source iconoclast and Stutz got more than a little upset when nobody wanted to listen to him.
If he were genuinely an influential guy, then he would have used whatever political power he wielded to further his own goals, either inside Microsoft or outside. Instead he spent his time writing an O'Reilly book, ironically, to convince people that.NET was not such a bad thing after all.
People who are influential don't feel a bipolar-esque need to bemoan their employer and make Cassandra forecasts of doom and gloom; they work to get what they want. It's people who are not influential who end up blogging a "fuck you, you are stupid" letter to their former employer.
Before this gets modded down as flamebait, I'm not attacking open source so much as questioning the exponents you choose.
You forgot to mention the missing detail that has driven me away from such arcades, which is that the video games tend to cost more than the alcohol.
Yeah, 8-way racing is cool but so is beer and billiards.
As often as these terms are used gratuitously, they do serve an important function.
I guarantee that all of you, at some point in your careers, will have the opportunity to work with people who whine, complain about how things are all fucked up, and bemoan how nobody listens to them and everyone is stupid.
Generally these same people have no action items, are the least proactive, have no sense of accountability, and in general, do not execute (yet another term).
Anyone can throw ideas and opinions around. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort to recognize that something is horribly wrong and to point it out. It's quite another to take ownership (yet another one) and do something about it.
If for no other reason, these terms get thrown around alot to remind people that they are ultimately there to contribute, further the company's goals (or actively try to change them) and not just to complain.
No, I'm not a manager but have been around long enough to know talk is cheap.
Slashdot Mirror
do you listen to the world famous supreme team show?
Please return the balance of your stipend to the bursar.
You can't just look at the licensing price, you have to look at the Total Cost of 0wN3rship.
If you doubt this, ask your friendly neighborhood kike, nigger or spic whether they feel any of those terms has power over them or defines them.
Does anyone else suspect this "e-mail" was put together by a clever bored Sinophile?
My guess is this system was likely not designed for use by run-of-the-mill merchants with transaction volume below the millions (and conceivably billions). Like many have pointed out, your typical store merchant would laugh at the prospect of roulette-based revenue.
This system was designed to solve the problem of handling billing and payment collection for A LOT of transactions per unit time. Think NASDAQ. Think VisaNet. Think McDonald's-years. Think pay per wireless packet, a concept routinely floated by Rivest's MIT colleagues including Dr. David Clark.
Coupled with a computationally efficient token verification scheme, I could see how this system could turn standard billing practice/procedures on its head, provided the big corporations have enough smart people in their stables to say, "Rivest is right." For instance, if my statistics memory serves, this system should effectively enable stepless billing (without increments or round-off issues) - in other words, finest-grain discrete-time pro-rating for services provided, tunable per application to some arbitrary epsilon.
I think music downloads are a red herring. It's entirely possible that PepperCoin will never see the light of day as a consumer payment service. But I'm very curious to see what the world's largest accounts receivable departments have to say about it.
256MB and 512MB memory sticks will be coming out this Spring but they will be bank-switched (i.e. a mechanical switch will let you choose which 128MB of RAM you want to use).
Pretty lame.
My point is, I think it's incredibly ironic that people are totally willing to believe and cite the government when it suits their argument and only double-take and question when their personal comfort space is intruded upon.
Are you a trained musician yourself?
I guess it's true, we live in an age where google really is the source of truth and people don't feel the need to do their own research.
Before this gets modded down as flamebait, I'm not attacking google so much as questioning the authorities you choose.
First off, Stutz by his own admission is trained as a musician. This "software architecture" thing appears to be more or less a lark.
His list of contributions (to MS and otherwise) in recent years appears to be:
- "WebClasses" - a failed alternative to VB components for Microsoft Transaction Server
- the "Shared Source CLI" - the underpinnings of Microsoft's vastly successful C# implementation
It seems Microsoft hired this guy to be their token, quirky open-source iconoclast and Stutz got more than a little upset when nobody wanted to listen to him.If he were genuinely an influential guy, then he would have used whatever political power he wielded to further his own goals, either inside Microsoft or outside. Instead he spent his time writing an O'Reilly book, ironically, to convince people that .NET was not such a bad thing after all.
People who are influential don't feel a bipolar-esque need to bemoan their employer and make Cassandra forecasts of doom and gloom; they work to get what they want. It's people who are not influential who end up blogging a "fuck you, you are stupid" letter to their former employer.
Before this gets modded down as flamebait, I'm not attacking open source so much as questioning the exponents you choose.
that alone made for a damn fine CD-R burner.
You forgot to mention the missing detail that has driven me away from such arcades, which is that the video games tend to cost more than the alcohol. Yeah, 8-way racing is cool but so is beer and billiards.
I guarantee that all of you, at some point in your careers, will have the opportunity to work with people who whine, complain about how things are all fucked up, and bemoan how nobody listens to them and everyone is stupid.
Generally these same people have no action items, are the least proactive, have no sense of accountability, and in general, do not execute (yet another term).
Anyone can throw ideas and opinions around. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort to recognize that something is horribly wrong and to point it out. It's quite another to take ownership (yet another one) and do something about it.
If for no other reason, these terms get thrown around alot to remind people that they are ultimately there to contribute, further the company's goals (or actively try to change them) and not just to complain.
No, I'm not a manager but have been around long enough to know talk is cheap.
tick tock tick tock tick tock ...
Sheesh, proof positive that having a low slashdot UID doesn't give a bonus to saving throws versus trolls!
IN CAPITALIST AMERICA, we don't have to make that statement anonymously.
Have you not read about Linus' infamous "core commit couch"?
Info is here:2
http://www.hardwarez one.com/articles/articles.hwz?cid=2&aid=393&page=