Clicks from users of "free" computers won't generate revenue because advertisers will avoid them like the plague.
Depends, really... In the poorer neighborhoods, you still find companies who happily make profit off of poor folks more often than not: Liquor/Beer, Tobacco, low-end calling cards, pre-paid cell phones, and, pretty much anything you'd find in a local convenience store on the bad side of town... especially those that feed off of legal yet less glamorous addictions.
Hell, even convenience stores would want to target 'em. So would grocery stores.
They may get food stamps and government checks instead of AMEX and dividends, but they're going to spend what little they do have somewhere... Last I checked, tobacco, beer, and convenience store franchises are still making some rather surprising profits, in spite of their biggest demographic being the "welfarebooks", so to speak.
To be fair, the OLPC had mesh networking, a semi-rugged build, a rather unique means of power/replenishment, and was begun as a project back when notebooks would cost you an average of $800-$1000 apiece. Trying to undercut the average price by up to 90% really took some doing.
Nowadays, Google only has to shoot for cutting the average netbook price by 50-66%, and (unlike today's OLPC) doesn't have to shiv out for a Windows license to do it, which saves them a healthy chunk of change ($20 - $30, IIRC) right off the bat.
Think about it: most smoking cessation drugs/etc work to suppress the receptors that (in smokers) have a built-up craving for nicotine. They are (IIRC) the same receptors that have to do with emotions (again, if I'm wrong, some neurologist out there please say something).
course, I suspect the dosages in the movie were a wee bit higher.... but I suspect that if the movie version were ratcheted back enough, it would work pretty much the same way.
(disclaimer/opinion: yes, I'm a smoker, no I'm not going to get a fucking vaccine for it. If the HPV vaccine is any indication, the shot might better odds at killing me than lung cancer ever would. If it comes to my quitting, I'll just quit and be done with it - like millions of people have before).
Well, there were a few things that were highly illegal to sell in Utah: hardcore pr0n, beer with an alcohol content of over 3.2%, actual fireworks, and gambling.
The cities of Wendover, Nevada and Evanston, Wyoming both manage to do a very brisk trade in these things - they are both nearly a 2-hour drive in opposite directions from Salt Lake City. The majority of these towns' incomes come straight out of the wallets and purses of Utah citizens.
Now, these commodities are fairly cheap, and certainly not worth the gas and time if one did a cost-benefits analysis... yet folks happily lay out the time and resources because they're 'getting away with something'. If they're willing to go to that length for warm beer or a box of bottle rockets? Imagine what folks are willing to do for a 51" plasma screen that isn't (in their eyes) gimped by government edict.
One problem w/ the scenario: immigration. One of the most touchy subjects in Europe tends to be that of immigrants, who come in and happily fill the vacuum left behind, and then some - swelling the population anyway.
Now consider that the EU and its constituent members have among the world's strictest immigration policies (but if you make it in, odds are that you get access to some of the world's most generous benefits packages).
The US by contrast has a (relatively) more open immigration system (you don't even have to really do the process - just hang around on the down-low until the next amnesty), and the result is about the same.
In order for your theory to work, the entire planet (or at least a super-majority) would have to raise their living standards.
Good idea, but the bulk of the folks who voted the politicos in would immediately revolt, then vote for whoever is first to promise lowered power bills to the electorate.
Why not? I mean, sure Torvalds isn't exactly a Ghandi (who ironically never got one, IIRC)...
...but then again, look who else got one: Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Barack Obama - not as if these three gents had really done too much to earn it (okay, Carter brokered the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement back in the 1970's which later fell apart, and did a lot of post-presidential negotiation work, but really... not much done by any of 'em - esp. compared to the likes of Martin Luther King Jr, FFS...)
If you're doing it corporate-style, you should already have a local repo (for bandwidth and security reasons), them lock yum.conf to only recognize your local repo.
Doesn't solve all permutations (e.g. discreet downloaded packages, some idiot installing apt-get, etc), but it solves enough of them to make things sane again.
Besides, if nothing else I could have a blast screwing with the heads of future historians.
("...of course, the fourth Nazi regime of Central California did try to establish a state religion. The dogma was a bit strange, but it went a bit like this..." [then I'd insert some real wild-assed stuff straight out of alt.slack's glory days] )
Once a reasonable facsimile of a real woman happens (nowhere near there yet), the tables will likely be turned, and in a big way. And no this isn't some sort of weird geek fantasy talking.
Thing is, men and women behave differently. A male human being has to mature a whole hell of a lot before he begins to sexually appreciate a woman as more than a collection of pretty smells, nice curves, and a warm vagina. We guys (not universally, but on average) are driven sexually by our five senses (esp. vision) more than anything else. Women OTOH are driven by far more factors, and look for these factors far sooner than guys do. This is why a male sex robot is fairly useless (unless someone pops the Turing route a whole lot sooner than anyone expect, that is), while a fairly dumb female sex robot would happily be useful to an unfortunate majority of the male population.
Objectively, it would have a cheaper ROI, you can treat 'em like objects (guys have a history of that with real women anyway), and when you get bored with one, you can get another. There are faults with the theory, though. If you're turned on by, say, a woman's intelligence, you're going to be like most of the women out there - sorely disappointed. Besides, my missus wouldn't let me get one anyway.:)
Back to TFM's topic? Why take the risks of sending your wealth to your (probable) unrevivable corpse? Just have some of your stem cells frozen, then let 'em make a close of you, and give the money to the copy of you (it won't be you, but hey - at least your DNA can still have some fun with the dough). It's cheaper (way the hell cheaper), far more certain with today's technology than necro-cryogenics, and a handful of cells would take a lot less space than a whole frickin' corpsicle.
Just what is Microsoft's angle? Surely they are gaining some advantage here.
That's easy: Free code from their newly-minted community.
One of the advantages that a company going FOSS has is that the company gets a potential for hordes of non-employees to help them code their product. Or, at least that's how the concept goes. Reality usually delivers a bit less, often a lot less. YMMV, but I suspect that Microsoft is banking on getting a whole bucketload of free dev help out of this (assuming they take in patches and etc).
SteadyState is a cage, designed to prevent the users from doing anything. It's like a finer-grained Faronics DeepFreeze, to protect users from themselves.
Heh... in UNIX we just call it "the way the thing was designed to work".:)
I live six states away from my nearest blood relative. Of course, that didn't stop my sister (who lives on the other frickin' coast of the continent) from calling me up, asking me to help her troubleshoot an issue with qmail on one of her webservers (she owns a small webservice company).
She was mildly miffed when her company got invoiced at the 'family rate' ($75/hr) - but at least haven't had any further requests for pro-level help since.:)
Although I do object to not being able to record the cable I paid for in all of it's HD gory.
Tell me about it - my missus is a horror flick fan too. (sorry, I had to:) )
Question, though - can one simply pipe it to a vidcap card when recording and call it good? The cards probably cost a bit, but they appear to be capable enough...
Try the plural - "networks", across multiple types of systems, and three languages, with no money... then integrate it with four different and proprietary VoIP systems. And oh yes, they're fucked up.
Not impossible, but not exactly a walk in the park (esp. the parts that require cooperation from overseas...)
Yep - and was told to "solve it", but given no budget by the CIO to do so, thus the script-fest.:)
Most of it is working, and it has had some nice side benefits (now, anyone can email anyone else anywhere on the planet).
But... the point is that we never would've bought the mess if the CIO had the cojones to first say "let me look into it and give you an answer by Friday", then stand up on that Friday and say "we can do it, but it will incur time and cost - here's why". Instead, he gave a blanket promise to have it done without incurring additional expenses.
Therein lies the peril of asking the CxO's what they want... if you're going to ask, at least be prepared to do some research on it first (and be sure to answer promptly after doing so, even if that answer turns out to be "...oh Hell, No!").
Agreed perfectly, with one big, fat caveat: Have a very good handle on what you have, and can and cannot be done. Also, never, EVER promise anything up-front w/o studying the problem.
Recently, I got one for my own employer, in that our CEO wanted to simply open his cell phone and search all contacts in the group...
...err, the whole multinational group, across four continents. At first, it sounds easy (IIFP doing most of the grunt work), but then the fun began. One site used GroupWise instead of Exchange (which by default apparently reverses the contact info names from MSFT AD's 'Last, First' format). The version of Cisco Unity (VoIP handling) we have only reads one field - "IP Phone", and will only let you do one forest as a whole, or 5 OU's max (which means even more scripting). We had to deal with language localizations (esp. Korean). We had a huge bucket of duplicate contacts. I've had to learn more about Exchange 2007's GAL handling than I ever wanted to. We had to coordinate it all across multiple time zones (12 hours back to Asia, 8 hours forward... oh, and the South African office), which means a lot of early mornings and the occasional late evening.
Long story short, it's doable, but it eats a lot of resources to get it done (fortunately, we haven't had to spend any real money for it, but it's not quite complete just yet). While I doubt that every request would start getting hairy like that, you'd be amazed at how often the most innocuous of CxO requests can end up eating a mountain of time once you get into the minutiae.
Finally, I'd suggest that no matter the request, you never take your eyes off the prize - keeping existing systems running with as much uptime as possible.;)
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Clicks from users of "free" computers won't generate revenue because advertisers will avoid them like the plague.
Depends, really... In the poorer neighborhoods, you still find companies who happily make profit off of poor folks more often than not: Liquor/Beer, Tobacco, low-end calling cards, pre-paid cell phones, and, pretty much anything you'd find in a local convenience store on the bad side of town... especially those that feed off of legal yet less glamorous addictions.
Hell, even convenience stores would want to target 'em. So would grocery stores.
They may get food stamps and government checks instead of AMEX and dividends, but they're going to spend what little they do have somewhere... Last I checked, tobacco, beer, and convenience store franchises are still making some rather surprising profits, in spite of their biggest demographic being the "welfarebooks", so to speak.
To be fair, the OLPC had mesh networking, a semi-rugged build, a rather unique means of power/replenishment, and was begun as a project back when notebooks would cost you an average of $800-$1000 apiece. Trying to undercut the average price by up to 90% really took some doing.
Nowadays, Google only has to shoot for cutting the average netbook price by 50-66%, and (unlike today's OLPC) doesn't have to shiv out for a Windows license to do it, which saves them a healthy chunk of change ($20 - $30, IIRC) right off the bat.
In a way, it is almost exactly like the movie.
Think about it: most smoking cessation drugs/etc work to suppress the receptors that (in smokers) have a built-up craving for nicotine. They are (IIRC) the same receptors that have to do with emotions (again, if I'm wrong, some neurologist out there please say something).
course, I suspect the dosages in the movie were a wee bit higher.... but I suspect that if the movie version were ratcheted back enough, it would work pretty much the same way.
(disclaimer/opinion: yes, I'm a smoker, no I'm not going to get a fucking vaccine for it. If the HPV vaccine is any indication, the shot might better odds at killing me than lung cancer ever would. If it comes to my quitting, I'll just quit and be done with it - like millions of people have before).
You're right - I got it mixed up for some odd reason...
err, guys? I was talking about RMS (read the GP post ;) ).
Err, Oregon has no sales tax, but yeah, otherwise I agree :)
Well, there were a few things that were highly illegal to sell in Utah: hardcore pr0n, beer with an alcohol content of over 3.2%, actual fireworks, and gambling.
The cities of Wendover, Nevada and Evanston, Wyoming both manage to do a very brisk trade in these things - they are both nearly a 2-hour drive in opposite directions from Salt Lake City. The majority of these towns' incomes come straight out of the wallets and purses of Utah citizens.
Now, these commodities are fairly cheap, and certainly not worth the gas and time if one did a cost-benefits analysis... yet folks happily lay out the time and resources because they're 'getting away with something'. If they're willing to go to that length for warm beer or a box of bottle rockets? Imagine what folks are willing to do for a 51" plasma screen that isn't (in their eyes) gimped by government edict.
One problem w/ the scenario: immigration. One of the most touchy subjects in Europe tends to be that of immigrants, who come in and happily fill the vacuum left behind, and then some - swelling the population anyway.
Now consider that the EU and its constituent members have among the world's strictest immigration policies (but if you make it in, odds are that you get access to some of the world's most generous benefits packages).
The US by contrast has a (relatively) more open immigration system (you don't even have to really do the process - just hang around on the down-low until the next amnesty), and the result is about the same.
In order for your theory to work, the entire planet (or at least a super-majority) would have to raise their living standards.
Good idea, but the bulk of the folks who voted the politicos in would immediately revolt, then vote for whoever is first to promise lowered power bills to the electorate.
Why not? I mean, sure Torvalds isn't exactly a Ghandi (who ironically never got one, IIRC)...
...he would refuse it anyway, on the grounds that it wasn't called the "GNU/Nobel Peace Prize".
If you're doing it corporate-style, you should already have a local repo (for bandwidth and security reasons), them lock yum.conf to only recognize your local repo.
Doesn't solve all permutations (e.g. discreet downloaded packages, some idiot installing apt-get, etc), but it solves enough of them to make things sane again.
...he could change his mind, then have that lawn frozen with him.
Dunno... it would still be fun.
Besides, if nothing else I could have a blast screwing with the heads of future historians.
("...of course, the fourth Nazi regime of Central California did try to establish a state religion. The dogma was a bit strange, but it went a bit like this..." [then I'd insert some real wild-assed stuff straight out of alt.slack's glory days] )
One word: Fembot.
Once a reasonable facsimile of a real woman happens (nowhere near there yet), the tables will likely be turned, and in a big way. And no this isn't some sort of weird geek fantasy talking.
Thing is, men and women behave differently. A male human being has to mature a whole hell of a lot before he begins to sexually appreciate a woman as more than a collection of pretty smells, nice curves, and a warm vagina. We guys (not universally, but on average) are driven sexually by our five senses (esp. vision) more than anything else. Women OTOH are driven by far more factors, and look for these factors far sooner than guys do. This is why a male sex robot is fairly useless (unless someone pops the Turing route a whole lot sooner than anyone expect, that is), while a fairly dumb female sex robot would happily be useful to an unfortunate majority of the male population.
Objectively, it would have a cheaper ROI, you can treat 'em like objects (guys have a history of that with real women anyway), and when you get bored with one, you can get another. There are faults with the theory, though. If you're turned on by, say, a woman's intelligence, you're going to be like most of the women out there - sorely disappointed. Besides, my missus wouldn't let me get one anyway. :)
Back to TFM's topic? Why take the risks of sending your wealth to your (probable) unrevivable corpse? Just have some of your stem cells frozen, then let 'em make a close of you, and give the money to the copy of you (it won't be you, but hey - at least your DNA can still have some fun with the dough). It's cheaper (way the hell cheaper), far more certain with today's technology than necro-cryogenics, and a handful of cells would take a lot less space than a whole frickin' corpsicle.
Just what is Microsoft's angle? Surely they are gaining some advantage here.
That's easy: Free code from their newly-minted community.
One of the advantages that a company going FOSS has is that the company gets a potential for hordes of non-employees to help them code their product. Or, at least that's how the concept goes. Reality usually delivers a bit less, often a lot less. YMMV, but I suspect that Microsoft is banking on getting a whole bucketload of free dev help out of this (assuming they take in patches and etc).
Nope - at least not after she had to cut the check for the first/last/only one :)
Not really.
SteadyState is a cage, designed to prevent the users from doing anything. It's like a finer-grained Faronics DeepFreeze, to protect users from themselves.
Heh... in UNIX we just call it "the way the thing was designed to work". :)
She thought it would be some token rate... should've clarified that one, sorry. :)
I live six states away from my nearest blood relative. Of course, that didn't stop my sister (who lives on the other frickin' coast of the continent) from calling me up, asking me to help her troubleshoot an issue with qmail on one of her webservers (she owns a small webservice company).
She was mildly miffed when her company got invoiced at the 'family rate' ($75/hr) - but at least haven't had any further requests for pro-level help since. :)
You know? It's pretty damned sad that OS stability and security has to be offered as a separate frickin' package to the OS itself.
Although I do object to not being able to record the cable I paid for in all of it's HD gory.
Tell me about it - my missus is a horror flick fan too. (sorry, I had to :) )
Question, though - can one simply pipe it to a vidcap card when recording and call it good? The cards probably cost a bit, but they appear to be capable enough...
Try the plural - "networks", across multiple types of systems, and three languages, with no money... then integrate it with four different and proprietary VoIP systems. And oh yes, they're fucked up.
Not impossible, but not exactly a walk in the park (esp. the parts that require cooperation from overseas...)
Yep - and was told to "solve it", but given no budget by the CIO to do so, thus the script-fest. :)
Most of it is working, and it has had some nice side benefits (now, anyone can email anyone else anywhere on the planet).
But... the point is that we never would've bought the mess if the CIO had the cojones to first say "let me look into it and give you an answer by Friday", then stand up on that Friday and say "we can do it, but it will incur time and cost - here's why". Instead, he gave a blanket promise to have it done without incurring additional expenses.
Therein lies the peril of asking the CxO's what they want... if you're going to ask, at least be prepared to do some research on it first (and be sure to answer promptly after doing so, even if that answer turns out to be "...oh Hell, No!").
Agreed perfectly, with one big, fat caveat: Have a very good handle on what you have, and can and cannot be done. Also, never, EVER promise anything up-front w/o studying the problem.
Recently, I got one for my own employer, in that our CEO wanted to simply open his cell phone and search all contacts in the group...
Long story short, it's doable, but it eats a lot of resources to get it done (fortunately, we haven't had to spend any real money for it, but it's not quite complete just yet). While I doubt that every request would start getting hairy like that, you'd be amazed at how often the most innocuous of CxO requests can end up eating a mountain of time once you get into the minutiae.
Finally, I'd suggest that no matter the request, you never take your eyes off the prize - keeping existing systems running with as much uptime as possible. ;)