If/. stars a subs service, you're not paying for the information, you're paying to support their continued ability to deliver you with responses to your http get requests. That is a service, and services cost money. Ample evidence of the aforementioned to be found in their net losses.
And since they already do respond to your http get requests, you can safely assume they pay for the ability. This simply means what we've al known for so long but have conveniently ignored for maybe the last decade:
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
It's no longer a question of whether/. should charge, it's how their revenue model should look.
I agree that the technique adopted over at arstechnica seems interesting, but I'm not sure how successful it will be.
Honestly, I have no idea how/. should be approaching this one, though I do have an excellent suggestion to make.
/. has unfettered access to the best minds out there currently; use them. Start an 'Ask Slashdot' thread to come up with an appropriate revenue model, then use a poll to evaluate the most likely alternatives.
A little background for the curious
on
Transparent Aluminium
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This research facility focuses on ceramic-related activity. Given that I am by profession very familiar with the process involved in the manufacture of such materials, I can venture an interesting guess.
Porcelain and ceramic tiles get their strength from 2 processes: exposure to pressure from a vertical hydraulic press, and subsequent firing (baking) of the tile.
1200 degrees is not very far off the temperatures at which the firing curves for commercial mass produced porcelain lie.
I thus assume that the difference lies in the pressure at which the pellets are pressed. It's got to be a LOT higher than the pressures used in the commercial porcelain/ceramic manufacture environ.
And anything will become harder when you compact it. Look at how diamonds are formed.
So essentially, what we are saying here is " Hey, we took some transparent stuff, compacted it really tight then fired it, and whee, we got ourselves a slab of very hard transparent stuff"...
One of the prime costs of parallelised computing architectures has always been the communication overhead. When you break a computation into little bits, the transportation overhead allocated per byte of data transmitted rises enormously, depending on degree of parallelisation, of course.
This is why TCP-based parasitic computation has never been much of an issue; it's simply not worth it. The processing power involved in forming packets and sending them off and receiving results has been greater than the power needed to perform the same calculation locally. Of course, with a sufficiently large number of hosts to leech cycles off, this ceases progressively to be true; assuming decent bandwidth too, naturally. Both generous asusmptions, even nowadays.
The real innovation here, IMHO, is the thought of conducting this kind of leeching using Java/Javascript. Both languages have splendid control flow structures, the bread and butter of number crunching. This means that there can be greater computational assignments at the nodes between transmissions, and this, if you've been following the stream of my thoughts here, means greater efficiency.
I'm looking forward to some examples now that parasitic computing should be technically feasible, efficient, and economic.
And I predict a lively ask/. session of how to guard against such exploitation without resorting to java/javascript disabling.
1. seti@home accept donations, as their site clearly indicates. Without wanting to sound pernickety, I would personally feel a lot better knowing that donations pointed at the project are actually going there, not just expended on UCB in general. As I understand it, there are several private financial donors. And when I say donor, I mean the greenback kind, not the cycle kind.
2. But starting last month (January 2002) the bandwidth used by the rest of campus increased in an unexpected and unexplained way Hmm. With that much bandwidth, how can such a surge still be unexplained? Basic sysadminship.
3. Someone said that one easy solution was to join other distributed computing projects. Someone else then slagged him/her off. Don't be silly. This is a real solution until the UCB sysadmins get their act together. Kazaa and morpheus shouldn't be using up bandwidth paid for with donations to setiathome.
disinfo.com is nice, but...
on
Disinformation.com
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I personally prefer www.fair.org. Disinfo, while interesting, are oftentimes too radical for my taste. It almost seems like they go out of their way to fabricat-err, uncover conspiracy in the name of "no smoke without a fire".
fair.org is more a kind of media watchdog. I like their work. You might too.
One question: does this thing hum, vibrate...?
on
Foot-Powered Laptop
·
· Score: 1
Or anything like that?
Because that would just give the dog one more reason to affix itself to my leg...
There's 2 scenarios here, I imagine; scenario one where the tools are open source. This does not mean the work itself must be opened, which is not beneficial to the concept of openness.
Scenario 2 has some of the code being used being GPL'ed. I don't know about this; what would most coders do, hunt around for a piece of code closest to requirements then hack it, or code from a scratch? Your answer to that question will either refute or reinforce that part of what I think...
Moreover, what are the odds of the reused code containing functionality deemed to be useless for the specific purpose for which it was obtained? In the rarified example of customization, this would be a Bad Thing.
Then again, I don't code for a living. Sounds like your call here would go further.:)
I read the article, and to be honest there's nothing really new in there to justify the newsworthiness; there's no revolutionary thinking there.
The whole idea has been stated often enough before, and I think the author was looking for the term 'critical mass'. Open source adoption has to reach critical mass - this means that we don't need to get everyone on the bandwagon, we just need enough to get the rest back on.
This is also sometimes expressed as the 80-20 rule, a personal favorite of mine which I leverage whenever I can. 20% of the causes yield 80% of the results, generically stated.
And while Mr. Schrage makes a good point of WalMart basically being the behemoth that can represent 20% of the causes on its own, this does not necessarily mean that it is reasonable to think they might one day go open source. It is here that the submitted story fails to compile - scale has nothing whatsoever to do with acceptance of open source. Indeed, scale may be inimical to implementation of open source.
With an organization of WalMart's size, as another post correctly pointed out, it is always advantageous to go the tailor-made way. The reason here is another concept called 'economies of scale'; the tendency for life to get easier the bigger you get.
A small illustration; Company A, annual net profit $10,000, and company B, annual net income $1,000,000. Both need software which, tailored, costs $1,000. It does not really get more expensive to tailor software the bigger the organization gets. More computers does not mean more individually tailored apps. You only, in other words, develop an application once. I know there's exceptions here, such as per license fees and such, but these are exceptions. In our example, company A runs CustomApp on 10 machines and company B runs it on 1,000. Each user, naturally, gains in productivity from using software created exclusively for this particular task he/she performs, and it is here that we notice that the productivity gains in company B are 100 times that felt in company A. The example here is very rough, and full of holes and I'll probably pick up a lot of posts arguing here - but it is basically a sound analysis. Tailoring just makes more sense with these big puppies.
And tailoring software does not mix well with the ideology behind open source.
Essentially, targeting the Company A's of the world would probably be a waste of effort, enticing as their support would be.
Things have to be done the hard way, I think; Company B's are the way to go.
Basing this distro on RedHat is probably the only innovation offered up here; I assume this is where the relative ease of use of the resulting distro comes from. As for minimal resource distros, you needen't go all that far... linux.org has an interesting list.
True, most of the minimal resource distros there lack things such as X and decent installers.
Besides, imho the proper way to install a minimal requirements linux on a machine is Linux from Scratch, though this, to reiterate a previously made point, sort of blows the whole 'ease of use' issue out of the water.
So my understanding would be that RULE is linux for the poor desktop.
This, by the way, could be the main thrust of the desktop push; windows pretty much has the high-end desktop market wrapped up; why not stage an attack from the ranks of those 486's stashed away in the closet?
The Interesting Results of a Quick Dig
on
PayPal Goes Public
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Nokia Ventures is in on paypal, as the article states. Nokia Ventures focuses portfolio priority on mobility and IP related businesses. BMC Software is a partner, along with Nokia and others, in Nokia Ventures. BMC deals with business solutions, that wonderful catch-all, but a look on their site will tell you these people are very supply-chain oriented.
This is of course jumping to many conclusions reeking more of wishful thinking than any sense of reality, but the potential for synergy here just tickles me silly...
I'm picturing an entire order-shipping-billing cycle, along with the obligatory online supply chain management system, all operated from PDA's and/or cell phones...
Any suit with a geek-streak such as me is no doubt drooling by now.
It occurs to me that it is a sad thing that we have to rely on someone like Mr. Bemer to do the job of the government and protect the hapless consumer from the wrath of the corporation and its bevy of lawyers.
There was a post on here which expressed optimism that Mr. Bemer seemed like a responsible enough person to grant the patent. What patent? Why should this be patented to begin with? The system should be rigged such that philanthrophic caretakers should not have to appear; what happens next time when BT decides to patent the power button?
The system is failing the consumer/citizen here. I think deeper introspection is required of the legal system and the IP code.
To open source, Rob, not to each other. Y'see, you can only demonstrate your commitment, I think, to the open source development model by opening up the child-rearing policies. All decisions of parenting shall from now on be decided in polls. Let's bring these kids up to worship cowboyneal.
Oh, and Rob, remember; kids have no ctrl, no alt, and no delete. Best of luck:)
I know I should reply to a comment rather than start a new thread in here where possible, but the idea I wish to convey is present in many comments here.
I'm a suit, and a would-be geek at once; I read/. religiously, code in C, and an at 26 am being groomed for top management in one of the largest organizations in this country; I feel here I am qualified to drop a few remarks in the direction of this topic.
We have a smaller IT department, and I have found my work with them to be uniquely frustrating,mainly because they lack the motivation to check their work before passing it on. Ideally, however, they would want to be insulated from the needs of management; they should only be exposed to the requirements of their direct superior, the IT boss.
The IT boss here would be the responsible person for translating vague management requirements into specific IT-related tasks. This reporting system requires these queries to be run at these times.
eeks don't understand suits and vice versa. This is not a judgment, it is a reality many of us face. There has to be a translation function, an interface if you will, and this should be the function of IT management.
Hm, I'm wondering how the people in charge intend to maintain the sum of energy within the arena/universe. What happens if a spectator gets a little too attached to the prey and brings a high-powered flashlight?
This kind of resource balancing/world resource design scenario can get tricky... They ought to have called in Sid Meier:)
Number one, we need to start categorise hacks into luxury hacks, conducted mainly by those with too much time on their hands, and mother-of-invention hacks which were the original and more exalted variety. Seems a little blasphemous to cut off my right arm and get off doing the exam when I'm really left-handed.
Secondly, this article feels a little dicey. If I pull out the engine from my Fiat and drop a truck engine in, then put up a page saying "This is how I did it; by being careful, kids" do I get posted?
> Name brands enhance the realism of a game
Hmm. I'm not sure what to make of this statement. Part of me agrees, considering that the point of many games is role playing, whether explicitly as in RPGs or lessobviously like Quake or GTA, so realism is desirable.
Another part of me thinks that the computer screen is just another medium, albeit a swiss knife of a medium, or a herd of cats of a medium if ou will. Did advertisement make telly more realistic way back when?
And besides, what is shareware? It is simply content delivered with advertisement within (the nag screens, etc.). The only major difference occurring ot me here is that the advertising on shareware is usually almost exclusively for the people producing this content/program/service.
How long is it going to be before we get GTA5 for free with a 30 second Dell ad every 15 minutes?
>Professor Steve Jones believes this, in part, >because 'human populations are now being >constantly mixed, again producing a blending >that blocks evolutionary change.'"
I think Professor Jones missed one salient point; who exactly says that human populations are mingling as much as he thinks? This may be happening in the developed West, and indeed perhaps only in parts there. It's certainly not a hallmark of developing world anthropology, this intermingling. Intermingling requires a fairly advnaced degree of civilisation to breed tolerance of cultural differences. Most of the world lacks this brand of civilisation.
I really don't think New York alone, Professor Jones, or London, can halt the pace of evolution.
A buck a movie may sound good, but what I'd really be interested in, being a suit by profession, is how the revenue model looks. You can still pay one dollar for something and get ripped off. Look at it this way; there's a lot of costs avoided in this manner, not least of all the cost of the physical theatre, equipment, logistics of wordwide distribution, etc. I'm sure you're beginning to get the picture.
Slashdot Mirror
If /. stars a subs service, you're not paying for the information, you're paying to support their continued ability to deliver you with responses to your http get requests. That is a service, and services cost money. Ample evidence of the aforementioned to be found in their net losses.
/. should charge, it's how their revenue model should look.
/. should be approaching this one, though I do have an excellent suggestion to make.
And since they already do respond to your http get requests, you can safely assume they pay for the ability. This simply means what we've al known for so long but have conveniently ignored for maybe the last decade:
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
It's no longer a question of whether
I agree that the technique adopted over at arstechnica seems interesting, but I'm not sure how successful it will be.
Honestly, I have no idea how
/. has unfettered access to the best minds out there currently; use them. Start an 'Ask Slashdot' thread to come up with an appropriate revenue model, then use a poll to evaluate the most likely alternatives.
This research facility focuses on ceramic-related activity. Given that I am by profession very familiar with the process involved in the manufacture of such materials, I can venture an interesting guess.
Porcelain and ceramic tiles get their strength from 2 processes: exposure to pressure from a vertical hydraulic press, and subsequent firing (baking) of the tile.
1200 degrees is not very far off the temperatures at which the firing curves for commercial mass produced porcelain lie.
I thus assume that the difference lies in the pressure at which the pellets are pressed. It's got to be a LOT higher than the pressures used in the commercial porcelain/ceramic manufacture environ.
And anything will become harder when you compact it. Look at how diamonds are formed.
So essentially, what we are saying here is " Hey, we took some transparent stuff, compacted it really tight then fired it, and whee, we got ourselves a slab of very hard transparent stuff"...
Where's the innovation?
One of the prime costs of parallelised computing architectures has always been the communication overhead. When you break a computation into little bits, the transportation overhead allocated per byte of data transmitted rises enormously, depending on degree of parallelisation, of course.
/. session of how to guard against such exploitation without resorting to java/javascript disabling.
This is why TCP-based parasitic computation has never been much of an issue; it's simply not worth it. The processing power involved in forming packets and sending them off and receiving results has been greater than the power needed to perform the same calculation locally. Of course, with a sufficiently large number of hosts to leech cycles off, this ceases progressively to be true; assuming decent bandwidth too, naturally. Both generous asusmptions, even nowadays.
The real innovation here, IMHO, is the thought of conducting this kind of leeching using Java/Javascript. Both languages have splendid control flow structures, the bread and butter of number crunching. This means that there can be greater computational assignments at the nodes between transmissions, and this, if you've been following the stream of my thoughts here, means greater efficiency.
I'm looking forward to some examples now that parasitic computing should be technically feasible, efficient, and economic.
And I predict a lively ask
1. seti@home accept donations, as their site clearly indicates. Without wanting to sound pernickety, I would personally feel a lot better knowing that donations pointed at the project are actually going there, not just expended on UCB in general. As I understand it, there are several private financial donors. And when I say donor, I mean the greenback kind, not the cycle kind.
2. But starting last month (January 2002) the bandwidth used by the rest of campus increased in an unexpected and unexplained way Hmm. With that much bandwidth, how can such a surge still be unexplained? Basic sysadminship.
3. Someone said that one easy solution was to join other distributed computing projects. Someone else then slagged him/her off. Don't be silly. This is a real solution until the UCB sysadmins get their act together. Kazaa and morpheus shouldn't be using up bandwidth paid for with donations to setiathome.
I personally prefer www.fair.org. Disinfo, while interesting, are oftentimes too radical for my taste. It almost seems like they go out of their way to fabricat-err, uncover conspiracy in the name of "no smoke without a fire".
fair.org is more a kind of media watchdog. I like their work. You might too.
Or anything like that?
Because that would just give the dog one more reason to affix itself to my leg...
There's 2 scenarios here, I imagine; scenario one where the tools are open source. This does not mean the work itself must be opened, which is not beneficial to the concept of openness.
:)
Scenario 2 has some of the code being used being GPL'ed. I don't know about this; what would most coders do, hunt around for a piece of code closest to requirements then hack it, or code from a scratch? Your answer to that question will either refute or reinforce that part of what I think...
Moreover, what are the odds of the reused code containing functionality deemed to be useless for the specific purpose for which it was obtained? In the rarified example of customization, this would be a Bad Thing.
Then again, I don't code for a living. Sounds like your call here would go further.
I read the article, and to be honest there's nothing really new in there to justify the newsworthiness; there's no revolutionary thinking there.
The whole idea has been stated often enough before, and I think the author was looking for the term 'critical mass'. Open source adoption has to reach critical mass - this means that we don't need to get everyone on the bandwagon, we just need enough to get the rest back on.
This is also sometimes expressed as the 80-20 rule, a personal favorite of mine which I leverage whenever I can. 20% of the causes yield 80% of the results, generically stated.
And while Mr. Schrage makes a good point of WalMart basically being the behemoth that can represent 20% of the causes on its own, this does not necessarily mean that it is reasonable to think they might one day go open source. It is here that the submitted story fails to compile - scale has nothing whatsoever to do with acceptance of open source. Indeed, scale may be inimical to implementation of open source.
With an organization of WalMart's size, as another post correctly pointed out, it is always advantageous to go the tailor-made way. The reason here is another concept called 'economies of scale'; the tendency for life to get easier the bigger you get.
A small illustration; Company A, annual net profit $10,000, and company B, annual net income $1,000,000. Both need software which, tailored, costs $1,000. It does not really get more expensive to tailor software the bigger the organization gets. More computers does not mean more individually tailored apps. You only, in other words, develop an application once. I know there's exceptions here, such as per license fees and such, but these are exceptions. In our example, company A runs CustomApp on 10 machines and company B runs it on 1,000. Each user, naturally, gains in productivity from using software created exclusively for this particular task he/she performs, and it is here that we notice that the productivity gains in company B are 100 times that felt in company A. The example here is very rough, and full of holes and I'll probably pick up a lot of posts arguing here - but it is basically a sound analysis. Tailoring just makes more sense with these big puppies.
And tailoring software does not mix well with the ideology behind open source.
Essentially, targeting the Company A's of the world would probably be a waste of effort, enticing as their support would be.
Things have to be done the hard way, I think; Company B's are the way to go.
Basing this distro on RedHat is probably the only innovation offered up here; I assume this is where the relative ease of use of the resulting distro comes from. As for minimal resource distros, you needen't go all that far... linux.org has an interesting list.
True, most of the minimal resource distros there lack things such as X and decent installers.
Besides, imho the proper way to install a minimal requirements linux on a machine is Linux from Scratch, though this, to reiterate a previously made point, sort of blows the whole 'ease of use' issue out of the water.
So my understanding would be that RULE is linux for the poor desktop.
This, by the way, could be the main thrust of the desktop push; windows pretty much has the high-end desktop market wrapped up; why not stage an attack from the ranks of those 486's stashed away in the closet?
Nokia Ventures is in on paypal, as the article states. Nokia Ventures focuses portfolio priority on mobility and IP related businesses. BMC Software is a partner, along with Nokia and others, in Nokia Ventures. BMC deals with business solutions, that wonderful catch-all, but a look on their site will tell you these people are very supply-chain oriented.
This is of course jumping to many conclusions reeking more of wishful thinking than any sense of reality, but the potential for synergy here just tickles me silly...
I'm picturing an entire order-shipping-billing cycle, along with the obligatory online supply chain management system, all operated from PDA's and/or cell phones...
Any suit with a geek-streak such as me is no doubt drooling by now.
It occurs to me that it is a sad thing that we have to rely on someone like Mr. Bemer to do the job of the government and protect the hapless consumer from the wrath of the corporation and its bevy of lawyers.
There was a post on here which expressed optimism that Mr. Bemer seemed like a responsible enough person to grant the patent. What patent? Why should this be patented to begin with? The system should be rigged such that philanthrophic caretakers should not have to appear; what happens next time when BT decides to patent the power button?
The system is failing the consumer/citizen here. I think deeper introspection is required of the legal system and the IP code.
While the rest of us have to make do with ctrl-alt-del... :)
To open source, Rob, not to each other. Y'see, you can only demonstrate your commitment, I think, to the open source development model by opening up the child-rearing policies. All decisions of parenting shall from now on be decided in polls. Let's bring these kids up to worship cowboyneal.
:)
Oh, and Rob, remember; kids have no ctrl, no alt, and no delete. Best of luck
I know there's all this hype about computer literacy and such, but e-book format would probably shut out a lot of people.
This is hype. There's no way the publisher will go for this option. I mean, publishers are for-profit organizations last I checked.
Once again, this is nothing more than wishful thinking. I agree though, it'd be interesting.
I know I should reply to a comment rather than start a new thread in here where possible, but the idea I wish to convey is present in many comments here.
/. religiously, code in C, and an at 26 am being groomed for top management in one of the largest organizations in this country; I feel here I am qualified to drop a few remarks in the direction of this topic.
,mainly because they lack the motivation to check their work before passing it on. Ideally, however, they would want to be insulated from the needs of management; they should only be exposed to the requirements of their direct superior, the IT boss.
I'm a suit, and a would-be geek at once; I read
We have a smaller IT department, and I have found my work with them to be uniquely frustrating
The IT boss here would be the responsible person for translating vague management requirements into specific IT-related tasks. This reporting system requires these queries to be run at these times.
eeks don't understand suits and vice versa. This is not a judgment, it is a reality many of us face. There has to be a translation function, an interface if you will, and this should be the function of IT management.
Hm, I'm wondering how the people in charge intend to maintain the sum of energy within the arena/universe. What happens if a spectator gets a little too attached to the prey and brings a high-powered flashlight?
:)
This kind of resource balancing/world resource design scenario can get tricky... They ought to have called in Sid Meier
Number one, we need to start categorise hacks into luxury hacks, conducted mainly by those with too much time on their hands, and mother-of-invention hacks which were the original and more exalted variety. Seems a little blasphemous to cut off my right arm and get off doing the exam when I'm really left-handed.
Secondly, this article feels a little dicey. If I pull out the engine from my Fiat and drop a truck engine in, then put up a page saying "This is how I did it; by being careful, kids" do I get posted?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22trip+over+ power+cord%22+google Gee, zero hits returned... Doesn't look like they have any contingency plans for this one. Well spotted, mate!
Well, you'd be paying more than 8 dollars if there was no advertising, most likely. Not that I like ads, far from it, but they're there for a reason.
Damn, I hope I didn't just give doubleclick an idea there...
> Name brands enhance the realism of a game
Hmm. I'm not sure what to make of this statement. Part of me agrees, considering that the point of many games is role playing, whether explicitly as in RPGs or lessobviously like Quake or GTA, so realism is desirable.
Another part of me thinks that the computer screen is just another medium, albeit a swiss knife of a medium, or a herd of cats of a medium if ou will. Did advertisement make telly more realistic way back when?
And besides, what is shareware? It is simply content delivered with advertisement within (the nag screens, etc.). The only major difference occurring ot me here is that the advertising on shareware is usually almost exclusively for the people producing this content/program/service.
How long is it going to be before we get GTA5 for free with a 30 second Dell ad every 15 minutes?
>Professor Steve Jones believes this, in part, >because 'human populations are now being >constantly mixed, again producing a blending >that blocks evolutionary change.'"
I think Professor Jones missed one salient point; who exactly says that human populations are mingling as much as he thinks? This may be happening in the developed West, and indeed perhaps only in parts there. It's certainly not a hallmark of developing world anthropology, this intermingling. Intermingling requires a fairly advnaced degree of civilisation to breed tolerance of cultural differences. Most of the world lacks this brand of civilisation.
I really don't think New York alone, Professor Jones, or London, can halt the pace of evolution.
A buck a movie may sound good, but what I'd really be interested in, being a suit by profession, is how the revenue model looks. You can still pay one dollar for something and get ripped off. Look at it this way; there's a lot of costs avoided in this manner, not least of all the cost of the physical theatre, equipment, logistics of wordwide distribution, etc. I'm sure you're beginning to get the picture.
Anyone got some background here?
I'm not sure U2 would be taking this stance if they were not already successful/well off.
>...complain that it is impossible to "compete >with free."
Hmm. Who's been leaking internal memos from Redmond now?